A Scrap of Humanity
by aesc36
Summary: Two years after the defeat of Voldemort, Draco is called out of exile by the last person he ever expected to meet again, a person looking for answers even as Draco is looking for his own.
1. Chapter One

[Note: This is a revised and generally cleaned-up version of the original fic. My apologies for the complete lack of new material, but there were a few inconsistencies in the fic I felt needed to be addressed.]  
  
+Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus+  
(Vergil)  
  
CHAPTER ONE  
  
Draco Malfoy eyed the large white owl suspiciously. The owl, unperturbed by the fixity of Draco's stare, fluttered over to him and presented him with the parchment envelope clutched in its beak. Reluctantly, Draco took the envelope from the owl, which immediately turned and flew out the open window.  
  
Seeing the seal of the Hogwarts crest stamped into the red wax only put Draco more on his guard. He had the sense of enchantments worked into the envelope, set to trigger an unpleasant and possibly painful reaction should the wrong person open it -- a simple, modified incendius spell, most likely, but painful nonetheless. Flipping it over, he saw that the letter, as improbable as perhaps it was, was addressed to him by name and painfully accurate location; he was in the winter sitting room of Malfoy Manor, exactly as the envelope said. Stepping to the window, Draco peered about the grounds, but saw nothing. /Not,/ he thought irritably, /that I expected to./  
  
Wondering what the old bat of a Headmistress wanted with him, Draco cracked the wax seal with a sharp twist of his wrist and pulled the letter out. Surprise jolted through him, a rare and unwelcome experience, as he saw that it wasn't Minerva McGonagall howling at him for something -- on the contrary, Draco suspected that this letter had been written entirely without her knowledge. The next surprise came a moment later, as he realized who had sent it. Fighting disbelief, he read and re-read the contents of the letter, although no amount of repetition would ever get him reconciled to the words:  
Malfoy:  
  
I know it's been a while, but I'm writing to ask you to come to Hogwarts. You don't have any reason to, but we need you here. I can't discuss the reasons why, but I give you a promise of safe conduct and amnesty while you're at the school, should you decide to come. Send your reply back by express owl; the courier owl should have left straight away. Answer ASAP. Thanks.  
  
Ronald Weasley  
Auror, Dept. of Mysteries  
Order of Merlin, First Class  
Defense Against Dark Arts League  
/What the hell does he want?/ Draco scowled at the letter and slammed it down on an end table. The letter, not liking its treatment, went up in a blaze of fire that scorched the mahogany tabletop. /If you think that list of titles is impressing me, Weasley, you're wrong./ The Order of Merlin thing was new, but Draco supposed that someone who had engineered the final, decisive tactical strike against Voldemort's army would have gotten something for his trouble. Weasley had come out of it considerably better off than a lot of people, Draco thought bitterly, once more becoming aware of the vast, gaping emptiness of the manor around him.  
  
Crabbe and Goyle, who had usually haunted these rooms with him, were gone. Draco wasn't sure whether or not he truly missed them; they'd become friends, after a fashion, over the course of seven years, but it was difficult for him to relate to people who found ogling Saucy Sorceress magazines intellectually stimulating.  
  
Both his parents were gone, and that stung far more deeply than he liked to think. Lucius Malfoy, patriarch, had been killed in that last battle although Draco hadn't seen it happen (privately, he was relieved that he hadn't.) Narcissa Malfoy, alma mater, had died. Worse, she had died needlessly. Worst of all, she'd died because of him. Draco glared fiercely at the pile of ash that had been the letter. /You bastards, I should just let you suffer. I got my mother *killed* for you, and it's not damn enough./  
  
It had been in a fit of conscience that he'd done it, and looking back on it, Draco had decided that it proved irrevocably that no good deed goes unpunished. He'd had Harry Potter dead to rights, 'avada kedavra' burning a hole in his mouth just waiting to be spoken, when he'd simply stared hard into Harry Potter's eyes, read the defiance there, decided he couldn't live without that defiance in his life, and let him go.  
  
His punishment for that had been mild by Death Eater standards: a few sessions under the Cruciatus curse, Voldemort deciding that if Draco Malfoy loved his enemies so much, he wouldn't mind if a few of his close friends and family died -- after all, the Dark Lord had said with a sneer, friends help each other out. His mother had died screaming shortly after that, and Draco had seen every second of it.  
  
Draco allowed himself the fantasy of telling that to Ron Weasley. /So you'll forgive me if I don't come, seeing as I got my mother killed for you and all. I figure I've done enough./  
  
Weasley had suffered, too, though -- everyone had, at some point or another. His sister had been killed in a Death Eater uprising in Devon, and one of his several brothers had died when the Ministry of Magic building exploded. Many of his idiot Gryffindor housemates had been killed or badly hurt in the attack Weasley himself had set up. He probably still thought about that, and dreamt about it at night. Draco fervently hoped that was the case.  
  
Intriguing, though, the mention of Harry... If it were anyone other than Weasley who'd sent the letter, Draco would have said it was deliberate.   
  
Shaking himself, Draco strode down the echoing manor hallways, hearing his bare feet slap on the tile. Most of the rugs had gone and other heirlooms, too, confiscated by the Ministry after Voldemort's defeat. They'd left him with a bare minimum in his family Gringotts vaults (not counting, of course, the vast private stashes the Malfoys had always kept against such circumstances.) It was enough to keep the place, because the few house-elves who had flatly refused to leave still worked for free, and he didn't particularly want much. Not that he'd eschewed materialism -- perish the thought -- but there were more important things to do than buy more rugs and vases.  
  
Just before entering his study, Draco reflexively paused at the doorway. It had been his father's place, heavily warded against intrusion -- even the intrusion of a boy. He'd have to ask if he could come in, then wait for his father to dismantle the spells that kept the room safe, or else wait for his father to refuse. There weren't any more wards now, of course, as Draco hadn't seen the need of putting some up again... it was just reflex, although for a moment, he pictured his father sitting behind the vast ebony desk, poring over parchments and ledgers.  
  
His desk now, though, and Draco stepped behind it with a derisive snort at his nostalgia. /Good lord, you'd think you haven't had five years to get used to this/ he told himself sarcastically. He almost fell into the deep, soft embrace of the chair, sighing as it adjusted itself to his form. That was the last comfort he had, though, as he reached for pen and parchment, and wondered what in the world he was going to write.  
  
/Screw off/ sprang to mind, and Draco wrote it down with a flourish, staring at the ornate calligraphy and the vaguely crude message. /Maybe 'screw' isn't strong enough,/ he thought. /Bugger, maybe. Fuck. Yes, fuck./ He wrote that down as well and smiled with satisfaction.  
  
His pleasure dwindled as he considered the possibility that his answer, brief and unambiguous as it was, would probably not suffice. Weasley was the kind of person who, once he got an issue in his teeth, never let go of it, like a grindylow with someone's arm clamped in its jaws. Sighing, Draco resigned himself to most likely having to go in any event -- either Weasley or a lackey would be along to drag him to Hogwarts, under coercion most likely, force if necessary. He was still on the Ministry watch list of former Death Eaters, excused from trial because of Harry Bloody Potter's testimony, of all people.  
  
That was the message in the preciseness of the address; Weasley had gotten a bit subtler over time, as unlikely as that was. /We know where you are/ it said, clear as crystal. /We know right where you are./  
  
A sigh creaked from Draco's lips as he picked up his quill again and began to draft a somewhat more diplomatic reply, something along the lines of 'Oh, *fine*, Weasley, 'if you insist', with just enough huff in it to show the necessary independence. He summoned a post-owl, a black and evil-looking thing that had done courier work in the war (not a wise statement on his part, but it was the fastest he had), gave it the letter, and watched it fly away.  
  
* * *  
  
Two weeks later, he met Ron Weasley in Hogsmeade, along with a cadre of Aurors, all eyeing him suspiciously. Only Weasley seemed to be unaffected by the presence of a former Death Eater as he strode forward and offered his hand, a hand that Draco didn't take. Weasley's expression didn't change, but something -- contempt, maybe, or grim satisfaction -- flickered through hazel eyes that had grown a lot harder over ten years' time.  
  
"Draco, thank you for coming," the man had the nerve to say.  
  
"My pleasure," Draco bit out. /As if I had a bloody choice, Auror./ He flicked a glance in the direction of the waiting Aurors, who stared at him like a hungry pack of wolves. "I was under the impression I was granted safe passage and amnesty, Weasley."  
  
"Hm?" Weasley turned around and blinked, as if genuinely startled to find six special agents behind him. "Oh, they're your safe escort, Draco," he said calmly, face absolutely expressionless. "And you don't have to worry about them -- it's everyone else you have to worry about."  
  
Looking around the village, Draco saw that Ron was right; quite a few of the inhabitants remembered him, or recognized him from pictures or his resemblance to his father: tall, pale skin, silvery-blond hair and flinty grey eyes... /Yes, that, ladies and gentlemen, is a captive Malfoy./ The inimical glares and whispers -- some whispers were designed to be overheard by the entire street -- told Draco all he needed to know: the Aurors were the only people keeping the village from taking the law into its own hands.  
  
"Shall we go?" Weasley asked, motioning to his fellow Aurors -- subordinates, Draco realized dully, too stunned to make some snarky comment about how Weasel had come up in the world -- to follow him. They neatly fell into formation around Draco, a wall of nondescript black robes. A young witch with long brown hair stalked along next to him, eyes fixed determinedly forward, as if looking to the side would make her lose control. Hostility throbbed all around Draco, who felt the atypical but reflexive urge to shrink from it.  
  
The hike up to Hogwarts, something that had been truly fun a decade or so back, was interminable and Draco had begun to sweat (not wholly from exertion) by the time they crested the hill to Hogwarts and saw the castle.  
  
It was unchanged, which was a tremendous relief to Draco, even though he couldn't say why. The Quidditch pitch was still there, with its pristine banners and six goal hoops. The lake was still black and drank all the light of the midday sun, and above the lake the castle rose, vast and ancient, staring down over the landscape from its turrets, as if it had never seen bloodshed or death, or the greatest battle in modern wizarding history.  
  
/Maybe everything will be fine/ he thought as they entered by one of the side doors. His footsteps sounded louder on the flagstones, the echoes deeper, not like the quick tap-tapping of school kids' feet. All the tapestries were there, the paintings still moved to stare curiously at them as they walked past. There'd be a secret passage just up this way, Draco knew, next to a suit of Renaissance armor. It led directly to the Slytherin dormitories, assuming one knew the passwords to trigger the proper doors. Otherwise, it led the hapless soul in endless circles. He wondered what the passwords were now, and if the armor still worked properly to open the first doorway.  
  
But there was little time for nostalgia as Weasley had brought his team, and Draco by default, to a grinding halt just outside a fairly nondescript wooden door. Weasley rapped out a few short, mysterious orders that dispersed the six Aurors to parts unknown, leaving him alone with Draco, who stared at him suspiciously.  
  
"Wanted to get me alone, Weasel?" Draco asked.  
  
Weasley just grinned. "You have no idea how long I've waited for that, *Draco*," he said, carefully emphasizing Draco's first name. "But unfortunately, it's not your lucky day... It's just that what I'm about to reveal to you is classified information."  
  
Curious but not wanting to show it, Draco managed to disguise his interest behind a smirk. "Is that what they're calling it nowadays? 'Classified information'?"  
  
"You're not really in a position to make innuendo," Weasley answered, voice absolutely flat. "I'm serious Draco, and you can take my word for it that I would never voluntarily have anything to do with you if it wasn't important."  
  
Draco just nodded, sensing that a smart remark would be brushed off and leave Weasley up a few more points in the perpetual battle that had just resumed after a decade's interference. And there was an unwonted seriousness in Weasley's voice that made him balk from making his typical snarky retort. "Well, what is it then?" he asked. "Lead on."  
  
Shrugging and muttering something about washing his hands of the situation -- Draco grinned at this, as he apparently hadn't lost his touch -- Ron pulled out his wand and reeled off an incredibly fast and complex pass code while quickly tapping the wand against the door at certain points. The door, after a moment's thought, swung open with a harsh grating sound and an unnatural echo.  
  
Weasley offered no explanation for this, but stepped directly inside. Draco followed him into a sparely furnished and windowless office that reminded him suddenly of Snape's, with the exception of the current lack of pickled animal parts and potion bases. He stood next to a chair, feeling a bit awkward and resenting it, as Ron knelt down by a trunk, fiddled with its locks, opened it, and extracted a large book which he dropped on the empty desktop. Dust billowed out from between the pages of it.  
  
"Have a seat," Weasley mumbled. He took his own advice and almost fell into his chair. Draco, with a bit more decorum, sat down and arranged his robes around him.  
  
Weasley glanced up at Draco with a bit of the trademark glitter in his hazel eyes, a sharp reminder of what had once been on the minds of several boys during seventh year. Draco scowled and motioned for him to get on with it. Fortunately, Weasley took the hint.  
  
"We came across these when Hogsmeade was being rebuilt after the last battle here," Weasley began.  
  
"'These'?" Draco asked, studying the large volume. "There's more?"  
  
Frost iced over those warm eyes and Draco fell unwillingly silent. "No, there's just the one volume, but it's made up of many smaller books -- ledgers, really -- that we bound together. After we got everything organized and really started to look at them, we realized that these books, or whatever they are... are, well, not what they seem."  
  
"It sounds like you need a codebreaker for that," Draco said, "and before you ask, I wasn't given access to any of Voldemort's codifying spells or counterspells -- you'll find that in my deposition, Weasley, if you ever do any research."  
  
"We know that already," Weasley said patiently. "We tested the journals -- that's what we call them -- against every codifying charm we could think of and nothing worked. Hermione and the Arithmancy team have been over them too, and none of the standard equations worked out."  
  
"Then I'm at a loss to see why you want my services, Weasley," Draco said. Then, unable to resist the dig: "If that jumped up Granger -- " something in Ron's face made him change his mind about that "-- arithimatician couldn't crack a code, I have no idea how you expect *me* to do it."  
  
"The journals belonged to Severus Snape."  
  
A long silence stretched out, stretched like a rubber band until it snapped and Draco found himself lurching to his feet, nearly knocking his chair over in his agitation. "You *bastard*," he hissed, "You absolute bloody... *bastard*."  
  
For once, Weasley didn't say anything. He merely watched as Draco fumed and stormed, fury surging inside him. Draco ran through every bitter, hideous piece of invective he could think of, wishing all the while that he could either curse the man sitting across from him or punch him, and finally ran down into an exhausted, incoherent ramble.  
  
"You bastard," he finished, dropping into his seat again. /When did you make it a practice of losing control, Draco?/ he asked himself through his exhaustion. /Good lord, you'll be crying like a baby next./  
  
"I'm sorry," Weasley offered, making at least a passing effort to sound contrite. "Like I said, I wouldn't have called you in if it wasn't important, and this is -- and we think it involves you, specifically."  
  
"D'you think?" Draco asked, almost too tired to dredge up a sneer. "The man was my mentor and my protector in the Death Eaters, so I'd say it involves me."  
  
"Look, we're yanking straws here," Weasley said with some exasperation. The edge in his voice told Draco he was on the brink of losing his self-possession and spiraling into a famous Weasley temper tantrum. It was something that, any other day, Draco would have gone out of his way to encourage, but he found he couldn't deal with it at the moment. "Hermione believes they're diaries from the war years; six different volumes were found, and Severus... well, you know."  
  
"Died six years in," Draco said tightly. "Yes, I know."  
  
Weasley actually looked relieved at not having to say that. "As I was saying, we don't know what they contain -- but they might be of help to you in clearing your name of some of the charges made against you. Conceivably, if what Snape says can be verified, you could get some of your property back."  
  
"I'll never get my father and mother back," Draco replied, "and I think at this point it doesn't matter if Merlin himself acquitted me -- people would still believe I did what they say I did. That's life, Weasley. Take of the goddamned rose-colored glasses and look at it."  
  
A visible tightness in Weasley's jaw indicated that Draco was pressing the issue. /Don't lose it, Weasley/ he taunted silently. /It wouldn't do to kill a person you've promised amnesty, after all. I bet the Ministry would take an Auror up on charges over that, even if he did get rid of a confessed Death Eater./  
  
"They've *been* off," was his answer, "and I think you know that. I wouldn't expect people to welcome you back with open arms -- I'm probably one of the last people who'd do that, anyway. But hey, if you don't want it... don't take it. We can ship you back to your little manor in Cumbria easily enough."  
  
That, at least, was quite true. He *could* just go back to his manor and live out the rest of his life, all hundred-plus years of it, in seclusion and unspeakable boredom. He'd spent the past two years of post-war life like that, not counting the few months of depositions and Ministry court hearings to which he'd been subjected, and the prospect held little appeal. /Does it really matter what people think of you?/ he asked himself, and then decided that no, it didn't. He'd be legally clear, maybe, if those journals were what the Aurors thought. And that brought up something else.  
  
"Why're you giving me this chance? Two years ago, you people were howling for blood."  
  
Surprisingly, Weasley looked very uncomfortable and it appeared for a long moment that he wasn't going to answer. Draco stared at him, unwilling to let the issue die, and Weasley at length gave in, saying, "It was Harry, if you must know. He was the one who wanted to bring you out here in the first place."  
  
The room was suddenly very warm. "Harry?" the word emerged as a sort of croak.  
  
"Yes, Harry," Weasley said dryly. "You know, Harry Potter."  
  
"I ruddy well know who he is," Draco snapped.  
  
"Yeah, well, I don't know why he wanted you to come, of all people." Weasley unfolded his long limbs and stood up, stretching a bit. His eyes never left Draco, though, despite the casualness of the motion. "But he suggested it, and we didn't have any other leads, so I told him I'd contact you."  
  
"Why didn't he contact me directly?"  
  
Weasley smirked at that. "He's not a member of the Ministry, Draco. Technically, he's not even supposed to know about it, but he's the one who found the damn things, and I wasn't about to perform a memory charm on him."  
  
"How were they discovered?" Draco stood as well and moved to pick up the volume, noting the huge, ornate lock upon it. He didn't attempt to open it, certain that it had been bespelled in some way he couldn't pick up immediately. "I can't imagine Severus would leave them lying around." /Even years later you can't talk of him without choking up. Someone would think you're bloody in love with him./  
  
/I owe him a lot./ The notion of debt was utterly foreign to a Malfoy, but there it was; he had *owed* Severus Snape, and he'd let the man down.  
  
"In the very back of Honeydukes', believe it or not," Weasley said, laughing a little. His laugh, Draco noticed abstractly, hadn't changed much since their school days. "They were tearing down a wall to expand it, and three of the books fell out of a hole. Two more were found just outside the Shrieking Shack, one in the cellar of the apothecary."  
  
"That sounds like Severus," Draco said softly. He touched the shiny new leather of the book binding, so at odds with the crinkled and heat-abused parchment that had taken on the characteristic stains of something poorly taken care of.  
  
"You're right," Weasley said. He stared pensively off into the distance for a moment and then shook himself. "I'll get Hermione to break the curses on this and have it sent up to you."  
  
"Up?" Draco repeated. "I was under the impression I'll be staying in a dungeon."  
  
"Why would you think that?" Weasley peered at him curiously. "I said amnesty, Draco, and I meant it. Quit looking the damned gift horse in the mouth and take it, will you?"  
  
"Accepted," Draco muttered.  
  
Relief flickered across the Auror's face. "Finally," he muttered. He stretched one more time and made for the exit, clearly expecting Draco to follow him, which Draco did. Weasley shut the door behind them, again with that strange scraping and thunderous echo -- were there wards up? Had to be, although Draco couldn't see Weasley doing anything to set them up again. They stood awkwardly in the hallway for a moment, before Draco finally said:  
  
"So where am I staying?"  
  
"Teachers' quarters," Weasley said, turning a bit red. "Between Flitwick and Harry, as it happens."  
  
Draco wondered if the swift sideways glance Weasley favored him with was a coincidence; if this weren't the situation that it was, he would have said Weasley was trying, and failing, to be subtle about something. But the man standing before him bore very little resemblance to the gawky, mercurial boy Draco had known for seven years, with only flashes of humor and temper cropping up to remind him that this Ronald Weasley was indeed descended from the one Draco could remember. But then ten years and a war would change a person, if anything would.  
  
How had *he* changed? A question for a late night, Draco decided as he trailed Ron down the hall. A few students studious enough to be inside on a glorious day like today gawked at them as they passed. They looked incredibly young, just out of the cradle, and disgustingly, nauseatingly innocent, with their wide eyes and curious whispers. The thought was creditably uncharitable, and Draco took some comfort in it. But then... /You know what remorse tastes like/ he thought, once more becoming aware of the book in his arms, the only relic he had of his former Potions professor, his mentor, and his friend. /And you know what loss is./  
  
Restlessly, Draco's thoughts chased themselves through his brain, not letting up when Ron dropped him off in his quarters and explained that he'd be under strict watch and curfew. Draco was too distracted to put up the requisite fight, and by the time Ron excused himself and vanished to parts unknown, he was by himself. 


	2. Chapter Two

[Note: This is a revised and generally cleaned-up version of the original fic. My apologies for the complete lack of new material, but there were a few inconsistencies in the fic I felt needed to be addressed.]  
  
+Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus+  
(Vergil)  
  
CHAPTER TWO  
  
Draco had been secretly relieved that Ron (who he had decided to address by his first name, although reluctantly) had brought him his dinner last night, although he covered it by making a sharp comment about it possibly being poisoned. Ron's response was an unreadable look and a, "Well, that's why *I* brought it."  
  
Life with the Death Eaters always had a tinge of danger; death had always been a possibility, either from the hand of Voldemort or a jealous subordinate thinking to inch his way up the hierarchy. However deadly that place and time might have been, Draco thought of it almost nostalgically -- he had been able to thrive there and shape power for himself out of the flaws and idiocies of others too blind to recognize manipulation for what it was. Here, though, hostility circulated through the air, an enmity against which he could do nothing except try to ignore it.  
  
He surprised himself, therefore, by falling asleep almost directly after finishing his dinner, and the last thing he thought before tipping over into dreams was that Weasley must have snuck a sleeping potion into the grape juice -- no, that wasn't the last thought, he realized as he woke to a sharp tapping. The very last thought was that maybe death wouldn't be so bad, after all.  
  
The tapping distracted him from his morbidity, and Draco rolled over to search for the source of it. A dark, indistinct blur was moving agitatedly behind the smoky glass window of his room. It paused briefly and the tapping sound came again.  
  
/An owl? Who in Merlin's name is owling me? At this time of day?/ He hadn't told anyone where he was going, and the few people who would owl him would *definitely* not send messages to Hogwarts. And if they did... Draco ground his teeth, already cursing their stupidity, and swung out of bed. He shuffled awkwardly to the window, trying to keep his blanket around him -- it was damn cold in here, and he'd have to speak to Weasley about it -- so as to prevent himself from freezing, tripped the latch, and stared as a large dusk-colored hawk hopped in.  
  
For a moment, he felt himself be drawn into a staring contest with the bird, which seemed content to just look at him. It was a beautiful creature, its plumage dark but with a lustre that caught the early morning sun so the feathers shone like obsidian. Over the cruel, curved beak, dark eyes regarded Draco with keen intelligence, and Draco had the sudden feeling that the hawk was attempting to read his mind.  
  
They stood like that for a time, the man and the hawk, until finally the hawk let out a cry of irritation and launched itself into the air. Draco stumbled to the side, closing his eyes to avoid the sharp downward sweep of the flight feathers, and spun around, preparing to chase the stupid bird out of his room. /This is the last thing I need/ he thought as he opened his eyes to see where the hawk had gotten to.  
  
/Yes, this is definitely the last thing I need./  
  
The hawk had gone, and in its place stood Harry Potter.  
  
/*Definitely* the last thing/ Draco thought faintly, staring at him, unable to mask his shock.  
  
Harry, for his part, stood and watched him without saying a word until Draco was able to recover. There was tiny glint in his green eyes that might have been humor, but it might have been light reflected from his glasses, too. In either event, Draco didn't care, and he scowled.  
  
"So, Potter," he said lightly, "come to torture me some more?"  
  
"No I haven't," Harry answered, fidgeting with his robes -- his *professor's robes*, Draco realized with a start -- a bit. "I came by to see how you were doing earlier, but there's huge bloody lot of Aurors outside the door and they didn't look disposed to let me in. So, I came in the other way."  
  
"The Animagus thing is new."  
  
"Yes, it is." Surprisingly, a bitter little smile twitched its way across Potter's thin-lipped mouth. He was still pale, Draco saw, and his sloppy black hair had small smatterings of gray in it. Considering what must have been his life, though, Draco decided that was to be expected. "I was finally registered last year -- something about a potential fine, if I didn't." He looked around the room and said, sounding a bit awkward, "Do you mind if I sit?"  
  
"I wasn't aware you were staying," Draco said with the frostiest tone he could manage. /What is he *doing* here? For God's sake, kick him out now -- let the damned Aurors deal with him./  
  
"We have things to talk about," Harry said, spying the chair at Draco's desk, "and I really need to sit down." With that he turned on his heel and limped -- limped! -- to the chair and sat down heavily, wincing.  
  
"Should I ask when that happened?"  
  
The look Harry gave him was surprisingly shrewd, considering he'd always had his emotions right out in the open, like Weasley did. Gryffindors were historically horrible at subtlety -- they had the panache and tact of a herd of Blast-Ended Skrewts in a room full of puffskeins. But then again... /Change is good for the soul/ Draco reminded himself. Things had changed in ten years. Ten years had made Ron Weasley watchful and confident, and it made Harry Potter unexpectedly subdued, and had given him a limp, something Draco found vaguely horrifying to think about.  
  
"I fell," Harry said, massaging his calf muscle, an expression of deep concentration on his face. "Six stories, I think it was -- I honestly don't remember. It was just me and... and Neville. He healed what he could and made a potion to keep the bones from breaking anymore -- can you believe it? Neville, of all people -- but by the time we got to Madame Pomfrey, it was too late."  
  
Draco sat down on his bed, feeling exposed and vulnerable at hearing the simple words. What could he say to that? He fumbled for a reply but found nothing.  
  
"I see you're teaching now," was what he said at last. "I presume it's Defense Against Dark Arts? You'd be a shoo-in for it."  
  
Unexpectedly, Harry smiled and shook his head. "Transfiguration," he said, "what with Minerva being Headmistress and all, she doesn't have time to teach it anymore. I was the only qualified Animagus available, and I really didn't have anything else to do, so I took her up on the offer."  
  
"Teaching whiny little brats to turn matchsticks into needles, Potter?"  
  
"Something like that."  
  
"I would have thought being the Gryffindor Quidditch hero would have sent you begging to the Chudley Cannons or something," Draco said, secretly rejoicing at the snide tone. /That was appropriately nasty/ he thought with some satisfaction. /You haven't lost it yet, Draco old boy./  
  
"Can't play anymore," Harry answered tersely. He gestured to his leg.  
  
"Oh." Deflated, Draco carefully looked at everything else in the room besides Harry, casting about for something to say. What could be said between old enemies? Everything that needed to be said had been said in school, and the night when Draco had spared Harry's life. Further words seemed like they'd be beating a dead horse, but keeping silent was absolutely untenable. "Should you even be here?" he asked. "I'm sure your precious Weasel would go positively mental if he caught you in here with me."  
  
Again, Harry flushed, blood suffusing his pale skin with a muted glow. "He's not my precious Weasel," he muttered, glaring at an offending corner of the room for a moment before transferring his ire to Draco, "and I would imagine that he *wants* me to be here -- after all, you were brought here as part of a classified Auror project, so of course everyone knows about it. The faculty, anyway, knows you're here, and I think the Ravenclaws are working it out for themselves."  
  
/Why on earth would Weasel want Harry to meet with me?/ Draco asked himself, careful to keep any hint of self-questioning off his face. /What is that bloodydamn Auror up to? I'd figure he'd be shagging Harry blind this time of day./  
  
/*You* would be, that's for sure,/ some buried part of his id answered.  
  
"The truth is, I *have* wanted to talk to you," Harry continued, his expression softening a bit from anger to mere iron-headed determination. "The Ministry may have swallowed that line about your wand malfunctioning when you tried to kill me, but I didn't."  
  
/Oh, it's this./ So there was something unresolved they needed -- or Potter thought they needed -- to hash out, after all. "Look," Draco said, striving for calm, "I didn't come here to discuss my past with anyone, *Potter* -- I only came because I wasn't offered a bloody choice in the matter. If you want a heart-to-heart chat with someone, go and whine to Weasley awhile."  
  
"Can't." Was that a glint of pleasure in Harry's eyes? Draco hadn't realized Harry had become so... so sadistic. In any other circumstance, it would be highly gratifying. "Ron's busy with other stuff."  
  
"Granger, then."  
  
"She's busy, too."  
  
"Have all little Potty's friends abandoned him, then?"  
  
Harry shook his head, smiling a bit, refusing utterly to be baited. "They're busy *together*," he said demurely, just before that mild, heart-stopping smile became positively wicked. "Didn't you notice the wedding ring?"  
  
"I was a bit preoccupied at the time." /So Granger finally went and did it,/ he mused. /Never would have figured either of them for the marrying type -- never would have figured that they could stand each other for five minutes./  
  
"Three years ago in July," Harry added helpfully, still grinning. "I never thought they'd do it, myself, but they *did*, and I'm happy for them. Ron's settled down a lot since they've been together."  
  
Draco sniffed, thinking of the almost casual display of muscle and good looks Weasley had offered him last night. "If you could call how he behaved last night 'settled down.' I don't think I've seen a man try to crawl up my shirt like that. At least not since school, and he didn't even know what he was *doing*."  
  
"Ron's a tease. He can't help it."  
  
"It's probably inherited." Draco hoped that Harry would let the veiled reference to Weasley's family slide, and to his relief, Harry did. The relief was short-lived, though, as Harry returned to the attack.  
  
"Look, I want answers, *Draco*," Harry said in the tone of voice that commanded instant attention. It didn't have the arresting resonance of Severus' voice, but Draco found himself listening nonetheless. "You could have killed me that night -- I saw you. You were going to do it, and I knew I couldn't do anything to stop you. I still know that I couldn't have done anything to save myself, and I'm willing to bet you know that too. But you didn't, and I want to know why." He paused, then seeing something on Draco's face, added: "And don't even try the line about the wand. I don't want to hear it. Why did you spare me?"  
  
"I didn't come here to be interrogated," Draco muttered, getting to his feet.  
  
"What? Do you honestly think you're going anywhere?" Harry demanded. He stood up as well, although the action was very obviously labored. "I don't think the Aurors are just going to let you waltz out of here."  
  
"They'll certainly pack *you* out of here quickly enough. Precious Potter consorting with the enemy and all."  
  
"Oh, for..." Harry bit off the obscenity just before Draco caught all of it, but it was enough to make him happy that he had managed to snap some of Potter's newfound control. "Look, I'm not after some deep cosmic truth, Malfoy" -- so, the surnames were back, Draco thought -- "I just want to know what made you not kill me that night. I thought you *hated* me, and I'm sure killing me would have put you way up there on Voldemort's list."  
  
"You're right," Draco said tightly, gripping the bedpost for dear life. He had to hold onto it or he would explode, or jump on Potter and kill him -- or possibly do something else to shut him up. "I did hate you -- I *do* hate you. And the Dark Lord would have bloody well kissed *my* ass for doing him a favor, instead of the other way around. But I didn't and, for the love of God, don't ask me that question again."  
  
"Why not?" Harry asked.  
  
"What part of 'don't ask me that question again' didn't get there?" /Does he not get the point? I don't want to talk about it! Will the man not shut up?/ He was worse than Granger with her endless questions and nitpicking lectures. For the first time in a long time, Draco felt invigorated, with fury coursing hotly through his blood. "Now, *Potter*," he said, enunciating each word, "you have exactly ten seconds to change back and get out that window, or go through the door, I don't care, before I get the Aurors in here and tell them that you're trying to kill me and violate my amnesty terms."  
  
"Are you sure you should tell them that? They might want to help."  
  
"Look... leave, okay? Just *leave*."  
  
Finally, some of Draco's desperation penetrated Harry's humorous reserve. The green eyes darkened a little in something that may or may not have been contrition -- Draco preferred to think of it as disappointment -- and Harry nodded and offered a mumbled apology that Draco didn't accept. Draco watched in silence as his one-time nemesis changed back into his hawk form and flew out the window, and when he was gone, Draco very nearly fell over with relief even as he cursed Potter's tenacity, and his own cowardice.  
  
* * *  
  
Weasley -- no, *Ron* -- came to collect him for breakfast a little later, explaining that due to an unforeseen house-elf strike (fictional, naturally, but Draco suspected Weasley didn't want to be carting Draco his meals three times every day), Draco would be eating in the Great Hall.  
  
"Are you sure that's wise? I might incite a riot."  
  
Ron favored him with a smile that was only marginally patronizing. "Oh, the whole school already knows you're here -- although they don't know why. Auror business and all that." His voice deepened in a failed attempt to sound imposing and mysterious. "And McGonagall's already said that the first person to complain will spend the rest of his or her life in detention. 'Mr. Malfoy was cleared of all charges relating to his role in the war' was what she said, 'and whoever sees fit to defame his character or cause trouble over his presence here will pay for it.'"  
  
Despite himself, Draco was impressed. It reminded him, although rather distantly, of Snape's description of what Dumbledore had gone through to get a reformed Death Eater on the Hogwarts' staff, and the bitter gratitude he had for the man. Snape hated being beholden to anybody. So did Draco. It had been an early bonding point between teacher and student, one of many they had found in their time together. Severus had been a friend... a real, honest-to-hell friend by seventh year. He had understood why Draco had joined his father, although he didn't wholly approve, but still... "Necessity," the older man had said. "If you do what you feel you have to do, then you can't blame yourself for doing it."  
  
It was how he had survived, Severus had explained later. It's how you live with yourself.  
  
And now Severus was dead, and Draco was alone in his old school, feeling very much a stranger as Ron Weasley stalked alongside him, glowering at the curious and occasionally vindictive faces of the students they passed in the hallway. Whispers followed them, low and insidious, and something else, too, although it definitely wasn't a whisper: it was loud, obnoxious, and thoroughly unwelcome.  
  
"LOOKIE LOOKIE!" Peeves swooped down out of nowhere, pelting Ron and Draco with some poor student's stolen Gobstones. "It's ickle Draco-waco and Ronniekins! How *ista* doing, Dracy?" He flipped over and peered at Draco upside-down, grinning maniacally. "Is you here for vacation, then?" he asked sweetly.  
  
"Beat it, Peeves," Ron growled, reaching for his wand.  
  
"Yes, sir, your Aurorness, sir," Peeves said obediently. He zoomed away, shrieking "DRACO MALFOY HAS RETURNED! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! DRACO MALFOY'S BACK! FLEE! FLEE! FLEEEEEEE!!!!" as he went. Despite Ron's death glares at the few stunned people in the hallways, the damage was done, and they stared at Draco as if he were Voldemort in the flesh before scurrying away.  
  
"I've lost my appetite," Draco muttered, half-turning to go back. Not surprisingly, Ron's hand shot out and closed in the folds of Draco's robes.  
  
"No, you haven't," Ron said with deceptive lightness. "You're coming to eat breakfast with the rest of us."  
  
"What's it to you if I do or not?" Reluctantly, Draco fell back into step next to Ron. "It's no bloody skin off *your* back if I eat in my room."  
  
"McGonagall's pulling a Dumbledore on us," was Ron's answer, which earned a slight grin from Draco. "Something about accepting reform in our midst, I think she said. And she brought up Snape, so I knew she was serious."  
  
The support of Minerva McGonagall, of all people, was surprising and a little humbling, and Draco dwelt on this as they walked through the teachers' entry into the Great Hall and climbed the dais. It kept him mercifully distracted as he shook hands with his old teachers and managed through nearly tripping Flitwick to avoid Harry, and as he tried not to wilt under the combined pressure of hundreds of curious student eyes. McGonagall refrained from offering any Dumbledore-esque speeches, and the meal passed by in a terrible, strained sort of silence.  
  
As a result, Draco's eggs and ham were generating an unhappy foment deep in his stomach as he slunk back to his room. Harry had left breakfast right off, saying something about having to get ready for lessons but looking at Draco the entire time, in a way that said lessons were the last thing on his mind. Just thinking about that look, those green eyes, made Draco's breakfast want to come right back up -- something that would hardly be good, considering he had the codex of Severus Snape's diaries in his lap.  
  
/What were you hiding, Severus?/ he silently asked the book, which did not answer him. /What *are* you hiding?/  
  
Ron had told him that a simple lock kept the codex secure, and that was easily disabled with the Alohomora charm. /*This* is how they treat classified information?/  
  
Then Draco saw the blank pages, and he realized that there wasn't much need for security when it came to an apparently empty diary. Still... there were diaries, and there were diaries, and one of the most deadly ones ever had been in his father's possession for many years until it had been given to a girl -- the Weasley girl, of all the wonderful, ironical things in the world. The devastation it, or the soul behind it, had wrought had been unbelievable. It still was.  
  
Carefully, Draco dipped a quill into a bottle of ink and wrote in minute print in the top corner of the first page, "Hello?"  
  
There was no answer. He waited for a good few minutes, but nothing came, and the small, squared letters remained where they were. Sighing, he pulled out his wand, tapped the page and said, feeling somewhat foolish, "Revalere secretum!"  
  
Nothing happened. The blank page stared up at him tauntingly.  
  
He cycled through all the various tricks he knew, with the pernicious knowledge that if trained Ministry cryptowizards and arithmancers couldn't figure out how to break the code --  
  
Wait. Ron had specifically said that there was *code*. That meant that there was something written, something that would have to be decoded (obviously.) Had Ron forgotten to mention how to even see what was written? Draco sifted through his memories of their few previous conversations and couldn't remember the subject coming up. It was a glaring and irritating oversight, one easily corrected by hunting for Ron throughout the halls of Hogwarts, which was not an appealing option. /I'll have to figure something out./  
  
Absently, Draco reached to swipe off a bit of extra Revelation Solution off the parchment. Just as his hand brushed across the surface of it, he saw a tiny bit of black, the stem of a letter.  
  
Excitement flared in him and he rubbed the parchment briskly, revealing, yes, there it was, writing -- Severus' obnoxiously tiny, precise writing. Severus had explained to him the reason for it: as a student in Potions, he usually had several people trying to cheat off him, so he learned to write small, but write neatly, as measurements and specific instructions had to be absolutely unambiguous. The words those neat letters formed were totally foreign, nothing Draco had ever seen.  
  
Yet... they were familiar, tugging a bit at Draco's memory. At the very top corner, almost obscured by his own writing until a banishing charm erased it, was a tiny line of print, a series of symbols used by only one man in the world -- used by one but known by two, because Severus had taught them to Draco late in his sixth year.  
  
It was his private shorthand for potions recipes, another result of his student career. Draco remembered the day during a private tutoring session that was mostly just an excuse to talk, when Severus had brought it up. He had given Draco a long list of the letters, numbers, and symbols he employed -- all of which represented measurements, ingredients, and directions -- and insisted that he memorize them. When Draco asked for a reason why he was given extra homework, Severus had flatly refused to give him one.  
  
/Severus./ He found it difficult to think of the man as Professor Snape or just Snape. After the end of sixth year, Severus had instructed Draco to call him by his first name. Again, no reason was given. But had he hoped just a bit, Draco wondered, that his diary would be found by the one person who might get some use out of it?  
  
Reaching for his quill again, Draco began a careful translation of the shorthand, Severus' other-language flowing back into his brain as if he were staring at the page he'd learned from. By the time he finished and checked his work, all thought of Harry had vanished and he only wondered where he would get Highland asphodel at this time of year -- the flowers, Severus had always said, were notoriously difficult to find. 


	3. Chapter Three

[Note: This is a revised and generally cleaned-up version of the original fic. My apologies for the complete lack of new material, but there were a few inconsistencies in the fic I felt needed to be addressed.]  
  
+Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus+  
(Vergil)  
  
CHAPTER THREE  
  
'Hello, Draco.'  
  
Those were the first words revealed by Severus' special Decoding Decoction. Draco was torn between amazement at Severus' apparent precognition and appreciation that his old friend had not revealed his secret code to anyone else. At the same time, he had the sense of a terrible, resigned sort of waiting, as if the words themselves were aware, trapped in their awkward, disordered form until he happened along to rearrange them properly, as if they had hoped against hope he would come.  
  
'I have buried these several books at various places in Hogsmeade, places that have, for various reasons, been important to my life at Hogwarts, and I am sure you know why. This page you are reading now is, in effect, my last will and testament, if you will, and it is the final thing I have left on record concerning my role in the cause of Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter.  
  
'By now, I expect that one side will have won - there was, I believe, very little time left before the end of things. At any rate, there are no great strategic secrets contained herein, for those I have decided to take to my grave, whenever I may go to it. Therefore, the value of these books is questionable at best, and rests solely with my reader to determine. As it is you, Draco, and you have decided for whatever reason to decode my books, I cherish the hope - and let it not be ill-founded, as hope usually is - that you will learn from what is written here.  
  
'I expect that I am dead at this point; these words were written the night before I was to leave for Cornwall on a mission for Dumbledore, and they were committed to the earth that very morning, as I for a long time had expected to be. Do not, Draco, wonder after my soul or worry that my fate was unjust: whatever end I have come to, I assure you that I have earned it.'  
  
Draco blinked back threatening tears and set the codex down on his desk. /Severus, believe me, you didn't earn it/ he addressed the dead man. He remembered, with some guilt now, Severus' refusal to join Draco with the Death Eaters again after he'd very nearly commanded the man to do so. "I think not," had been Severus' answer just before Draco left to join his father. "I had my fill of power in the first rising, Draco, and I believe I've lost my taste for what Voldemort passes off as power."  
  
"Oh, really?" Draco had asked. "And what's that, exactly?"  
  
Severus tapped his long, pale fingers together and, when he looked at Draco, the expression in his dark eyes was vaguely sorrowful. "It's the power that attracts the weak and small-minded," he said, not even smiling at Draco's mute outrage. "Do you think that the kind of power skulkers like Peter Pettigrew have is the kind of power you would want, or even deserve? No, I think not."  
  
"Pettigrew will get what's coming to him in the end," Draco had replied. "The Dark Lord sees what a useless, cowardly thing he is - won't take a mission if it hasn't a chance at succeeding. He'll reward the cunning - he'll reward *me*, I'm sure of it."  
  
"Illusions," Snape had said, waving a hand to dispel Draco's words into the ether. "There's nothing behind them except broken promises, *boy.*"  
  
And wasn't *that* the truth! Severus had paid dearly for refusing to re-join Voldemort, and he had paid even more when the Dark Lord discovered that Severus had betrayed him many years ago and turned spy for Albus Dumbledore. Draco had tried his best to mitigate Severus' initial punishment in some way, pleading long acquaintance, but Voldemort had been in an unusually short temper that day, and so it was that Draco was allowed to watch his long-time friend spend what seemed like hours under Cruciatus.  
  
Not, of course, that it had changed anything back then; slowly, over many late nights, he had managed to convince himself that Severus had asked for it, turning on his lord and master like that - turning on *him*, Draco, just when he had needed Severus the most. /Necessity... it's how you live with yourself./  
  
It changed things now, of course. In his more reflective moments, Draco had concluded that life as a 'man of leisure' (euphemism his) had given him the opportunity to examine his actions in minute, excruciating detail. And he could say absolutely that Severus had not deserved the fate he had gotten. He wondered what Ron and the other Gryffindors, or anyone else Severus had persecuted at school, thought of him dying. Had they been relieved? Sad? /They damn well have better been bawling their eyes out,/ Draco vowed privately.  
  
A soft brush of air against the back of Draco's neck startled him out of his thoughts. He slammed the book closed and whirled around.  
  
"Bloody hell!" he shouted, standing up so fast his chair fell over, masking his fright behind indignation (not that it was difficult.) "Do I get no privacy?"  
  
Harry Potter shrugged. "You're the one who left his window open."  
  
"Only because it smells like something died in here five years ago and got left," Draco said tightly. He glowered at Harry, who seemed unaffected. /When did they start *doing* this? Not rising to the bait?/ It had been one of the few joyful constants in his Hogwarts career, next to Quidditch (which he had enjoyed for its own sake to begin with, although having the chance to harass Harry was an added bonus): being able to say something, just the right thing, a word precisely placed to have either Potty or the Weasel springing at him in rage. And really, what got better than that, watching two people writhe with fury while under his control?  
  
That pleasure had vanished, though, and Draco's complaint felt hollow in his own ears.  
  
"I told you that we needed to talk, and the last time we 'talked,' you ended up avoiding the subject" Harry said carefully, eyeing Draco as if he were about to explode. For a moment, Draco thought he was, but with a mighty effort, he controlled himself and stepped aside, gesturing for Harry to sit down in his newly vacated desk chair. Harry didn't even try to conceal his gratitude as he limped over to it and sank into it deep, comforting embrace. "Thank you," he murmured.  
  
"Don't mention it." Draco pulled another chair over and sat down. /Might as well do the thing properly./  
  
"How are the diaries coming?" Harry asked, turning a bit to run a finger over the leather cover of the codex.  
  
"Fine."  
  
"Anything interesting?"  
  
/Oh, shit./ Draco found himself oddly torn between two conflicting sensations: to tell Harry what Severus had said - at least, some of it, anyway - or tell him to bugger off and mind his own damn business. But the bespectacled green eyes were guileless and clear, and most importantly, undemanding, so he said, "It's mostly personal stuff. I think Hermione was right - it's a record of the war, mostly. There are a few other things." /Please, please let him be satisfied with that./  
  
"I'm glad," Harry said, smiling slightly. Draco felt a rush of something very like pleasure at seeing that smile, and at realizing he had been able to inspire it. /Maybe there's something to this 'nice' business after all/. Harry was still looking at him, though. "You'll have to give a report to Ron and the rest of the Aurors, I imagine, if there's anything in there that could, y'know, possibly clear your name."  
  
The thought of handing the diary over to the Ministry - Ron didn't sound so bad, Draco decided in a fit of charity, but the Ministry of Magic... Draco's stomach clenched at the thought of turning over Severus' most private confessions to a bunch of bloodthirsty, vampiric bureaucrats. Keeping his expression as neutral as he possibly could, Draco said, "I hardly think they're going to take the word of a former Death Eater, if there is anything in there that would get me off the hook in the first place... and Harry, I did do most of those things they accused me of."  
  
Unexpectedly, Harry straightened up and glanced at the door. "I don't think..." he began, but trailed off as he pulled his wand out of his robes, followed by a tiny, mirrored device about the size of a Golden Snitch. Draco eyed the contraption curiously and Harry smiled, a smile with a refreshing touch of guilt to it. "It's a Silencer," he explained, setting the device on the floor between them and tapping it once with his wand, presumably to activate it. "The Aurors have the room warded against spells, but I think this baby'll work okay - they shouldn't be able to hear us. I sort of, um, took it off Ron's hands, if you get my drift."  
  
"How can we tell if it works or not?" Draco asked peevishly. "They'll be out there with their ears against the keyhole waiting for me to finish confessing."  
  
Harry's answer was a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream.  
  
For the first time in quite a long time, Draco felt faint. /This is what it feels like to have a heart attack,/ he thought dully, incapable of doing anything more than slump helplessly in his seat and wait for the Aurors to come in and finish him off. It therefore took him about two minutes to realize that he wasn't dead, or being packed off to Azkaban, and that Harry was still sitting in front of him, no longer screaming, but wearing an expression that said he was fighting a smile.  
  
"Do not," Draco managed to say ominously, as soon as he'd gotten his breath back, "ever *fucking* do that again, Potter."  
  
"*I* thought it was fun," Harry said, trying and failing to banish the smile from his lips. "And, as you can see, we're completely sealed off... and Draco, I give you my word that whatever we say here, I won't repeat it. Ever."  
  
Being the annoying, uptight Gryffindor he was, Harry would keep to that promise, Draco knew. If this had been Blaise Zambini or Pansy Parkinson, he wouldn't have spilled his guts if he'd been offered all the money in the world. If it had been Crabbe or Goyle... well, he might have told. There would always be the off chance they'd forget it after ten seconds.  
  
"Look," Draco said, stalling for a bit of time while he organized his thoughts, "I can *tell* you - whether or not you'll be able to understand what I'm saying is another matter."  
  
"Try me," Harry said with deceptive lightness.  
  
So stalling was not going to work. Draco took a deep breath, forced himself to keep looking at Harry while he screwed up his courage -- /First time you've *ever* had to talk yourself out of being a whiny little pussy,/ he told himself sarcastically. Finally, he managed to say, "I didn't kill you because I couldn't bring myself to do it, okay?"  
  
"I *know* that," Harry said impatiently. "What I've been wondering these past few years is how you couldn't bring yourself to kill me when you really didn't have a problem killing a bunch of other people."  
  
"I'm not a nice person, Potter." Draco glared at Harry, who glared back. "I'm not going to say that I had a change of heart and decided to go all noble and help out the other side, like Severus did, because I didn't. If you want to hear a nice little redemption story, you've got another bloody thought coming."  
  
Nothing in Harry's face told Draco anything of use - whether Harry was upset that he had escaped the clutches of reform, whether he was hearing a confirmation of what he already knew, whether he was thinking about Quidditch or how breakfast was entirely too rich... nothing. He could have been thinking anything for all the expression on his face. It irritated Draco to no end that Harry wasn't responding to him - he hadn't spared the man's life to have him turn into a bloody stone wall. He had saved him in a moment of absolute, temporary insanity, insanity because it was insane to hope that they would leave that stone corridor and find each other alive and unchanged in some imagined future, he unrepentant and obnoxious and conniving, Harry fiery and obnoxious and fighting-mad whenever they met. *That* had been insanity back then, because hope was really nothing more than a temporary, acute insanity, as far as Draco was concerned.  
  
He wanted very much to tell Harry that. The hope part, the insanity part anyway, not the "I couldn't live without your goddamned annoying presence" part. He proceeded to do so, in a spill of words that rapidly veered out of control.  
  
"'My goddamned annoying presence?'" Harry echoed.  
  
So he *did* say that after all - he had become gradually more incoherent, rambling on about hope and insanity and acuteness and all of that, so the last part must have just latched itself onto the rest and slipped out of his mouth. Goddammit.  
  
"Yes," Draco said, his voice bordering on shrill. "Your goddamned annoying presence. That's exactly what I said." /You're going to dig your own grave and bloody well lie in it, Malfoy./ "Do you need it spelled out for you?"  
  
"I think I've got it perfectly," Harry said quietly. He was still composed, but there was a wild, reaching expression in his eyes, as if he were trying to peer inside Draco's skull and make sense for himself of the tangle of gray matter hiding in there. "I had wondered..." He paused. "I mean, we drove each other crazy...."  
  
"Drive," Draco interrupted. "You're still annoying as you ever were, Potter."  
  
Harry smiled a bit, accepting the correction. "That..." He paused and the green eyes skittered away to lock in a dusty, forgotten corner. "I mean, that is... Why? I was - am, I mean - annoying. We couldn't stand each other. Why would you want that? No one in their right mind would want what we had."  
  
/You're talking like we had something, Potter./ Aloud, Draco said: "Do you honestly think I can explain it? I can't even explain it to myself. And while we're on the subject of unexplainable things, why the hell did you pull strings at the Ministry to get me off?"  
  
"Because you saved my life," Harry said immediately, staring at him with some surprise, as if he were genuinely shocked that Draco had asked the question, or that he hadn't figured it out for himself. "You spared my life when you had every reason to kill me, Draco... I owed you."  
  
"And you felt you were soothing your conscience by getting me out of Fudge's clutches?"  
  
"You *were* going to Azkaban," Harry answered, defensiveness creeping into his tone. "The court had already decided - you and a whole bunch of other Death Eaters were guilty, no matter if Merlin himself showed up and said that you were innocent. And once you were there, they probably would have seen to it that a Dementor would get to you sooner or later - and *I* know that, were I given the choice between exile and spending the rest of my short life in a cell, I'd take exile, thanks."  
  
"That's because you're lucky enough to be on the winning side," Draco growled. He tried not to stand up and pace, although he desperately wanted to work off some of his agitation. It was difficult to keep still and not fidget. "There's not much difference between living by yourself in a huge, empty house that used to be full of your family - used to be full because they *died*, because other people killed them - and being in a cell having all the happiness sucked out of you. I think I, at least, am in the position to be able to say that."  
  
Harry drew in a sharp breath, presumably, Draco thought, to lecture him on how *everyone* lost in the war, and where did Draco get off crying about *his* parents dying when people were dying left and right? What he said, though, was, "You're right. I'm sorry."  
  
It threw Draco off his course, which had already been firmly set to a good, stress-relieving tirade, and now he found himself floundering in the wake of Harry's unexpected concession. He struggled to work past the moment, considered and rejected saying everything from "You're not really sorry, you smug, sadistic bastard" to "Thank you so much for understanding," and opted for staring silently.  
  
At least that seemed to affect Harry, who shifted a bit under Draco's scrutiny. His unease brought back pleasant memories of their sparring matches at school, and the way Harry would never really bother hiding his fury whenever Draco said something to get under his skin - no matter how cold he kept his voice, anger always smoldered in those spectacular green eyes and colored his words. It was, Draco thought, the best form of stimulation outside of recreational sex - getting under Harry's skin had become a close analogue for getting in Harry's pants. As Harry worked himself up into anger, Draco would feel his blood heating up, his pulse would come faster, his entire body would tingle pleasantly in anticipation; by seventh year, their encounters had the quality of a choreographed dance - a dance that had become more dangerous to be sure, with tension in the air and war on the horizon, but it was still a dance Draco had particularly enjoyed.  
  
When that Moment came around, that second when he could have killed Harry Potter, it had hit him: what would he do without that in his life? Habit. The one thing a person should always be able to come back to is the person they either love or honestly can't stand, and sometimes the loved one and the unable-to-be-stood one are, in fact, one and the same.  
  
"I shouldn't have come," Harry muttered. "This was a bad idea."  
  
"You're right on both counts," Draco agreed. "I shouldn't have come, either - should have told Weasley to screw himself like I planned to do. But, unfortunately, things *do* get boring in Cumbria, and I decided against my better judgment to come anyway. As it seems you have done."  
  
Harry nodded and smiled a bit. He stood - or rather tried to; there was a terrible popping and twisting sound and a cry of pain stifled behind bitten lips as he fell back into his seat. Draco was on his feet in a flash, bending over Harry as Harry clutched desperately at his thigh, breathing curses between his teeth. "Oh, fuck," he hissed. "Oh, fuck not again..."  
  
"What is it?" Even in the desperation of the moment - /Please don't let him die,/ his mind begged irrationally - Draco hoped Harry wouldn't notice the anxious spike in his voice. "Can I do anything?"  
  
"No." Wincing, Harry shook his head. "I mean, yes... Get - get the Aurors in here. I need... there's a Muscle Unlocking incantation I can do, but the room is warded and I need... *they* need to take the wards down."  
  
"They'll kill me if they find you in here."  
  
"Please, Draco." The green eyes were filled with pain and pleading, so far gone from the typical flashy defiance. "I'll explain anything, but please... pleas - Oh, GOD." He doubled over and a sob hitched out of his chest. Draco stood frozen for a moment more before another weak "Please, Draco" drifted up to him, and that was enough to send him bolting for the door and asking the Auror outside, in the calmest possible voice he could manage, if she could possibly come in and help Harry Potter, who seemed to be dying.  
  
The Auror, the brown-haired witch who'd stalked alongside him upon his arrival at Hogsmeade, brushed impatiently past him. Her eyes widened at seeing Harry Potter in a place he manifestly was *not* supposed to be, but she didn't offer any comment, or curse Draco on a matter of principle. Instead, she pulled out her wand, muttered an incomprehensible spate of incantation, then knelt down next to Harry and whispered something to him. He responded to whatever-it-was with a tight nod, which seemed to sadden her and steel her at the same time, and she placed one hand on his leg - a gesture that oddly infuriated Draco - and gently touched the back of that hand with her wand. Another incantation, a glow of negative light, and a harrowing cry wrenched from Harry's mouth, and it was done.  
  
Harry was sweaty, shaking, and very, very pale, and his scar stood out lividly against the pallor of his forehead. Still, he managed a grateful smile for Draco and for the Auror, "Thanks, Lavender - I think I'll be good for a bit."  
  
"You're welcome." The Auror - wait. Lavender? It sounded dreadfully familiar to Draco, conjuring up images of obnoxious cooing over bunny rabbits in third year and swooning over the 'fine-ass hunk of wizard meat' that had become Justin Finch-Fletchley by seventh. "Let us know if you have any more problems, Harry... But for now, how about we get out of here? Madam Pomfrey will be wanting a look at you."  
  
She might as well have just said, "We should leave before the Slytherin and ex-Death Eater gets it into his head to murder you in cold blood" for all her subtlety, but then, Lavender Brown had been a Gryffindor, and therefore traditionally bad at the practice. Her reputation for being the champion gossip-monger at school had not helped in the slightest.  
  
"I have to talk to Draco for a moment," Harry said, politely shrugging off the solicitous hand Lavender had on his shoulder. "I'll be along. Don't worry about it."  
  
Lavender frowned. "Seeing as you're technically *not* supposed to be here - and seeing as you've stolen Ron's Sound Suppressor - I think I'll stand here until you're done." There was an edge in her voice that said there would be absolutely no argument, although Harry bristled before backing down and made her stand outside the field generated by the Sound Suppressor. She gave in with a heavy sigh and a dangerous glare at Draco, who watched the byplay silently.  
  
"Have you found anything?" Harry inclined his head, indicating Severus' journal, which had been lying forgotten on Draco's desk.  
  
"Nothing that's any of your business," Draco answered. He saw Harry recoil at his frosty tone and made himself apologize. "I'm sorry..." /There. That wasn't so difficult was it?/ "No, there's nothing in there about the war, or at least anything that you would consider important... And nothing that would acquit me of what I did, because Severus knew as well as I did that I was guilty of everything Fudge wanted to charge me with." He wondered if Lavender could read lips, and hoped fervently that she couldn't. "You didn't invite some kind of reformed demon back, Harry."  
  
"I think I did," Harry said, the expression on his face intense. "I don't think the old Draco Malfoy would have come here if Ron had asked him to - or if anyone had asked, because he wouldn't have cared."  
  
"What do you know, Potter?" Draco demanded.  
  
"I - "  
  
"You know absolutely bloody nothing about me, Potter."  
  
/You don't know about how my mother died because of you, Potter, and I don't know why I don't torture you by telling you that. I know that would tear you up, hearing that another person died because *you* lived. You don't know that there are times when I think that my mother for your life was a fair trade - and those are the times I think I'll have to hump anything that moves, the times just before I wonder what the *hell* is wrong with me for placing your life above my own mother's. The times I think 'Draco, you sick fuck...'/  
  
"But I know you're here." Harry turned and limped away, his face devoid of pain but his eyes brimming with it. "And thanks for coming... I'll talk to you later."  
  
He and Lavender left, though not before Lavender collected the Sound Suppressor and favored Draco with a filthy look. Draco shut the door behind them and leaned back, feeling the heavy bolts shooting into place through the tough oaken hide of it. A sigh shook loose from his chest and he stared hopelessly at the journal on his desk. /Severus, when did things start going wrong?/  
  
* * *  
  
Meals had, fortunately, been going a bit more smoothly, although Draco suspected it was because he was getting better at ignoring the unabashed gawking of the students (even the Slytherins were terribly obvious about it) and he had raised avoiding Harry to an art form. He sat comfortably ensconced between Flitwick and Ron, who usually ignored him in favor of talking with someone else, and Flitwick had learned to keep silent - the Charms professor's voice would become squeaky to the point of incomprehensibility when he tried to make conversation with Draco, so he had given up.  
  
It gave Draco time to mechanically shove food in his face and think about Severus' diaries. It had been a week since he had begun to read them, and there was still nothing of any possible legal use - not, as he had told Harry, that he had been expecting or hoping for any great revelation. Severus' diary would hardly be good character testimony anyway; his old teacher's writing was painfully confidential, dredging up incidents that Draco thought should have been best left forgotten.  
  
'I'm sure you remember sabotaging Harry Potter's Quidditch game in your third year, and how poorly that turned out,' Severus had written, in such a cavalier tone that it grated against Draco more uncomfortably than Severus' more famous shouting fits. 'Likewise, I'm sure you remember the discussion we had afterwards - no matter how cunning you are, something can always go wrong, and therefore, you should always take precautions in the form of a backup plan - or, even better, dispense with idiotic machinations altogether unless you can be certain of success. Or else know that you will be able to transfer blame or culpability to others.  
  
'You think yourself cunning, boy; at the time I am writing this, I hope you have come to know the true meaning of the word. Crouch was undone by a moment of incaution and Pettigrew was unmasked by chance - do you see? Responsibility and fate sent both these men to their deaths, or in the case of Pettigrew, destroyed any chance he might have had for a quiet life undetected as the Weasleys' pet. If you want to live - if you are, indeed, alive and reading my words - you will learn something known as *discretion.*'  
  
There had been more in that vein, and Draco flushed thinking about it. He *did* have discretion, goddammit. Venomously, he glared over in Harry's direction, watching as Harry talked about something with McGonagall. The man had the absolute nerve to look as if nothing had been torturing him in the week since they had last spoken, as if he wasn't wondering why Draco was refusing to give him straight answers or what was in those diaries he had unearthed, as if he wasn't aware that all Draco wanted to do was grab him and either pummel him for his pestilential interrogations or kiss him because... well, Draco didn't exactly know why, but he *really* needed to Kiss Harry Potter. But he was damned if Potter was going to know about it.  
  
/I have discretion in fucking *spades*/ he told himself.  
  
"No matter how hard you stare at him, his head isn't going to explode," Ron said very quietly in Draco's ear.  
  
Uncomfortably aware that he had definitely been indiscreet, Draco turned to scowl at Ron, who beamed back innocently. "You have lettuce on your tooth," Draco said irritably, "and quit leering at me."  
  
"Only if you quit leering at Harry," Ron said, picking at his incisor. He frowned a bit as he examined his index fingernail for a trace of offending lettuce. "Honestly, it's been a week - I figured you would have done something by now."  
  
"Done something?" Draco lowered his voice. He wished that Ron would have the grace to pull out that little Sound Suppressor gadget or his. "What on earth do you mean?" Even as he asked the question, Draco had the sinking feeling that he knew exactly what Ron meant.  
  
Ron gave him a faintly reproving look, as if he were disappointed with Draco's slowness. "I can't bloody well stuff him down your pants, Draco," he said, "and even if I could, I wouldn't."  
  
"Is this something you've been cooking up between the two of you?" Draco stabbed at an offending baby red potato on his plate, but succeeded only in sending the potato flying onto the floor and bouncing down the steps. "For being a sworn enemy and all, Potter was happy to see me - and you've been decent yourself. What do you want?"  
  
Surprisingly, Ron sighed. "Are you hungry?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Then let's get out of here." He unfolded his long body from its awkward contortion in his chair and stood, brushing off his robes. Without a backward glance, Ron strode out of the Great Hall and, as Ron was technically his bodyguard (Draco preferred to think of it as 'escort'), Draco had little choice but to follow him, dropping his napkin in his haste but not missing the curious upward glance Harry directed at them. Once they were safely in the abandoned corridors and Draco had a long, uncomfortable minute to stew in his own juices, Ron began to speak.  
  
"How are the journals coming?"  
  
What? "Fine," Draco said automatically. Weasley and Potter seemed to have taken a mutual delight in keeping him off-balance. "There's still quite a bit more to go, and I'm running out of Decoding Decoction, so I'll need some more before I'm to finish. I can have the thing summarized in another two weeks or so." Fourteen more days... surely that was enough of a window to see Harry and mentally flog himself a couple more times.  
  
"Good." Ron glanced at him, hazel eyes unreadable. "I wanted to say that you're... That is, when you decide to leave, you're welcome to take them with you."  
  
"Huh?" Draco almost tripped over his own feet in surprise. "Take them with me? Why? Don't you need to confiscate it for some mysterious Auror ritual thing? I would have thought the Ministry would be howling to get its hands on this."  
  
"It is," Ron assured him, smiling a bit, "or rather, it was. I've taken the liberty of, well - and don't let this get out - falsifying reports." His expression darkened a bit. "The truth is, I've gotten a bit sick of dealing with Fudge's paranoia; ever since he got proved so spectacularly wrong about Voldemort coming back, he's been worse than Crouch apparently was: anyone and anything having to do with Voldemort, even if it was someone who mentioned his toenail clippings or something, would get hauled in for interrogation. From what you've shown me, Severus' private thoughts don't need to get dragged out again. I told Fudge as much, and that we should let a war hero's memory rest in peace. The books will be returned to whatever family he has - which, as there's no Snape family we can find, is you, I guess."  
  
Draco ground to a halt. Ron, not anticipating the sudden pause, kept walking a few more steps before he paused and turned. A fury, inexplicable and stronger than anything Draco had ever known, consumed him, burning away preoccupation and discretion and bringing words, hot and passionate, to his lips.  
  
"What in the hell is the matter with you?" he demanded. "Why are you doing this? You hate me! We've always hated each other, and now you're fucking falling all over yourselves to give me stuff, to make me feel better, to think that I'm some kind of... of reformed criminal!" The words were much the same as he'd spoken to Harry, but he didn't care. "What would ever fucking make you think that, Weasley? WHAT?"  
  
Ron stared at him silently, apparently unmoved. Draco wound down and watched as Ron nodded and stared at the floor, thinking, and he watched as Ron said, "Harry told me what happened that night you could have killed him," he said, "and I found out through a few contacts what had happened to you because of it - your torture under Cruciatus and... and your mother. I've met some terrible, evil people - friends of yours - during the war, and none of them would have done what you did. None of them had a scrap of humanity left in them by the time they were pulled in by the Ministry...   
  
"When Harry told me that you were going to be put on trial and how he wanted me to help get you excused from it, I thought he was insane, but then he said you'd spared him - you'd *spared his life*, and he couldn't send you to death like... like everyone else we'd help put away in Azkaban." Ron paused and went on in a somewhat more strained voice, saying, "You can't... I don't know if you know what it's like to send people you used to go to school with to their deaths. I mean, I *hated* Blaise Zambini's guts in school, but watching him get his sentence read in the courtroom was *brutal*, even though it's almost certain he did all of what we charged him with. A bunch of people I had to testify against were in classes with me!"  
  
"So what does that say about *me*?" Draco demanded. "So you've got a conscience. Good for you."  
  
"You could have killed Harry, and you didn't," Ron said. "You can give whatever reason you'd like for doing it, but the fact remains that you saved his life."  
  
/Damn... Weasley *has* gotten smarter./  
  
Ron smirked in such a way as to leave no doubt that he knew what Draco was thinking. "I think there's something underneath your whiny, obnoxious hide, Draco," he said, obviously relishing what Draco knew was an enraged scowl on his face. "It's there - you *are* human. I know it, Harry knows it. Past that, I can't say." He glanced down the hallway, where a din arose that signaled the end of supper. "You might want to get back to your quarters before you get run over. Potions test tomorrow and the sixth-year Hufflepuffs are a bit nervous."  
  
Sure enough, a herd of Hufflepuffs broke off from the main body and stampeded in their direction. Ron ducked down a side hallway and vanished, leaving Draco to walk as swiftly as he could toward the turnoff to the faculty quarters. The Hufflepuffs galloped past him on their way to the library, thankfully not even glancing in his direction. Heaving a sigh of relief, Draco wandered down the corridor, not even acknowledging Lavender when she materialized right next to him. Ignored and apparently grateful for it, she accompanied him the rest of the way back to his quarters and saw him safely inside.  
  
The open window had been closed in his absence, but fortunately, not locked. Despite a twinge of misgiving and a little voice that told him to lock the damn thing, Draco opened the window a little bit, stood for a moment with his hand resting indecisively on the sash. /Should I keep it open or keep it closed... should I stay or should I go.../  
  
He kept it open and wandered over to flop down on his bed and stare at the canopied hangings above him. The fine brocade was done in elaborate whirls and interconnected knots so intricate Draco couldn't follow a strand through its various twisting and turnings. Everything blurred after a few minutes and then dimmed. Distantly, Draco thought to turn on a light and get some more reading done - /Should really get reading the rest of Severus' journals/ filtered through him from the haze surrounding his brain - but even as he thought it, he fell asleep. 


	4. Chapter Four

[Note: This is a revised and generally cleaned-up version of the original fic. My apologies for the complete lack of new material, but there were a few inconsistencies in the fic I felt needed to be addressed.]  
  
+Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus+  
(Vergil)  
  
CHAPTER FOUR  
  
Draco woke up in the morning with the covers twisted around his legs and, a thundering headache, and a very bad temper. Muttering into his pillow, he tried to extricate himself from his sheets, failed utterly, and collapsed back down to think unwillingly of the dream that had plagued him all last night: Harry had shown up, and Voldemort was there, one moment demanding that Draco kill him - but then in the next second, Voldemort turned into Ron who told him he wasn't going to shove Harry down Draco's knickers for a million Galleons - and then Ron turned into Snape, who actually *did* pick him up and try to stuff him up Harry's robes, shouting "Necessity, Draco! Necessity, boy - that's all there is!"  
  
In addition to the covers issue and his headache, Draco had woken up with Severus' voice ringing in his ears and an uncomfortable erection between his legs. He lay there, trying to banish his arousal through sheer force of will, concentrating on anything but being stuck under the stifling heat of Harry's robes and hearing dream-Harry asking him if he was having trouble breathing. He purposely did not think of the fact that Harry was one room over, barricaded away from him by a host of Aurors and warding spells, to be sure, but only one small room away...  
  
/This is not working./  
  
Sighing, Draco resigned himself to having to remedy the problem himself - /Necessity,/ Severus murmured sarcastically - but as he groped for the requisite mental images to stoke his passion, he found nothing but pale, insufficient memory. He played over the private reel of footage in his mind, of Harry in a variety of positions, doing things that were probably illegal in the wizarding world, or at least in Britain, beautiful with his pale skin and black hair and green eyes that peered lazily up at Draco as perfect, imaginary lips closed, hot and incendiary, over his erection.   
  
And strangely, as Draco rubbed himself feverishly against his mattress, those images were inadequate. Worse than that, his private fantasies had skewed so far from the reality that he found he couldn't take any pleasure in them. /That's the *point* of a fantasy/ he thought, annoyed and a bit worried at the lucidity he managed when jerking off. /It's not supposed to be the real thing./  
  
But he had the real thing one room away... Draco concentrated on the Harry he knew now, chastened a bit by the effects of time, more softly spoken and generally softer, but with unexpected edges and the determination that never left him. He pictured Harry with his painful limp and the pride that refused to use a cane, that instead found refuge in the form of another animal - and it occurred to him that Harry's choice of a hawk for his animal form was to compensate for something he had lost irrevocably in that accident: the chance to fly as he had once been able to, riding the wind currents as if he'd been born to them, the chance to fly and seek, gifted with eyes that could find anything.  
  
He thought of those penetrating looks Harry had given him, the uncanny feeling he had that Harry had somehow managed to pierce his skin and drag out his thoughts with talons, as if he were being disemboweled. He thought of those green, green eyes that, despite the years and all that had happened, had *not* changed.  
  
Draco rolled over, hand moving in earnest now, his entire body alive and throbbing. Excitement stirred in his gut, the anticipation of release curling tightly within him and spiraling through his veins. Compared to this, this exultation, the sense of Harry so clear in him, previous sessions shaded to insignificance. That those had satisfied him could not be doubted - they *had* -- but they were nothing compared to now, with fire burning in him and Harry's name on his lips, his body arching up into his own hand with an abandon of which he hadn't known he was capable, release seizing him and taking away everything, thought and pain and memory, together - and leaving - leaving -  
  
He slumped back down, spent and trembling, hand slack against his thigh. He stared up at nothing.  
  
/What?/ Nothing?  
  
A sigh shook his body, and he had the thought that he should do something instead of just lie there naked, but Draco found he couldn't do it. Drying semen stuck uncomfortably to his skin, but the annoyance was minor and easily overlooked; his muscles had become absolutely loose, his bones had gone to water. There were things to do, like go to breakfast and deal with another day, and read Severus' diary, but they all required far too much effort to be worthwhile. There was... there was... /Nothing,/ Draco thought abstractly. /Nothing at all./  
  
He felt free, bizarrely enough, in contrast to the uncounted private sessions he had conducted in his rooms with either himself or the individual he'd managed to entice into bed with him. Those times had always meant a gradual return to reality after the spasm of passion that came and went too soon - the hollowness of masturbation that came with waking up to the painful fact that the object of his fantasies was manifestly absent, and the sickening realization that the person in the bed with him was simply... simply not Harry, and usually out for power or gain, or the right to say he had royally fucked Draco Malfoy.  
  
Strange how one could not recognize those feelings for what they were, or be completely happy in a time when they should not have been. He could clearly remember smiling many times as he climaxed, either alone or with his partner - but those times faded to tatters and rags. /Ignorance is bliss,/ he decided. /Severus was right. Nothing is what it appears to be./  
  
Power, orgasms... it was all the same. Severus had realized the futility in chasing after the power offered by Voldemort and had gone his own way. Draco never had - he'd been blind, so willingly and absolutely blind, to flit along in Voldemort's shadow and take a body where he found it. From his present position, flat on his back with the knotwork of his bed's canopy above him, Draco was free to see the past for what it was.  
  
/Shit./ Compelled to move and not liking what he saw, Draco slid off the bed and pulled on his robe. Mechanically, he moved through his bath and dressing, trying not to think of anything. /Nothing,/ a small voice in his mind taunted. /It all meant absolutely *nothing*./ Resolutely ignoring the voice's harassment, Draco stepped to the door and poked his head out, wondering why Ron wasn't howling at him to get a move on for breakfast.  
  
Lavender was standing there instead, arms crossed over her chest. She spun when she heard the door open and glared at Draco in such a way as to suggest that the next time he startled her, she would respond with a curse of the unforgivable nature, rather than the "Goddammit, Malfoy!" she managed to produce.  
  
"He already has," Draco informed her in a low voice. "Everything. I don't suppose I could get some breakfast?"  
  
It took a moment for Lavender to recover, but she regained herself admirably. "Ron'll be here in a minute - the git still sleeps in on Saturdays, believe it or not." She rolled her eyes. "I think he rigged it on purpose that I got stuck babysitting you for the morning shift."  
  
A not-so-subtle reminder that he was still under watch, and that she couldn't understand why Ron insisted on giving an ex-Death Eater the benefit of his good opinion and trusting that he wouldn't try anything nefarious. Draco felt a surge of irritation at Ron's Gryffindor-esque naiveté again. /Nothing,/ the little voice reminded him. /Nothing really matters anymore./  
  
Draco resigned himself to waiting for Ron, who turned up fifteen minutes later, looking absurdly happy about something. It didn't grate at Draco quite the way he expected it to, and he asked - in a remarkably civil tone of voice, he thought - what Weasley was smiling about.  
  
"It's a bloody wonderful day," Ron enthused as they wandered down the hall. Draco could smell the awful scent of eggs and ham, and he made a mental note to stick to the fruit and bread. "Finally got the last of your paperwork cleared away last night - the diaries are yours, and I think Fudge is saying good riddance to them. Thank God for it, I say."  
  
"Thanks, Ron."  
  
Unexpectedly, Ron laughed, and it was his old trademark laugh: open and unaffected and unreserved. "I never thought I'd live to see the day when you'd be thanking me for something," he said, swiping at a fake tear. "I almost thought you were going to start cursing and insulting me, like the last two times I did something nice for you."  
  
"Yeah... well." Draco let the sentence trail off; his response to Ron's offer of amnesty and his offer of the diary *had* been met by strong language. /And 'strong language' is putting it mildly,/ he thought, wincing at his previous behavior. /Nothing,/ the voice replied serenely. /All nothing./ "I have been a bit of a bastard."  
  
"Just a bit," Ron agreed in a tone so neutral Draco was forced to glare at him. It earned him a sideways and thoroughly unrepentant grin, which was in many ways exactly what Draco had expected.  
  
/Wanking is cathartic,/ he mused to himself as they sat down to breakfast and he steadfastly avoided the ham and Flitwick's nervous tittering. He felt absolutely liberated from the torment of the past few weeks - of the past few years, even - and able to look at things anew. /People have changed,/ he thought for the thousandth time since his arrival had forced him to deal with a newly confident Ron Weasley and a very different Harry Potter (and even an Auror Lavender Brown, although that was still hard to credit.) But there was a huge difference between *recognizing* change and *accepting* it.  
  
They had changed. *He* had, in some fundamental way, although he could not identify it.  
  
He turned to Ron, who was plowing through his scrambled eggs. "Ron?"  
  
"Mmph... yes?" Ron ended up speaking past a mouthful of food. He swallowed thickly, coughed, and shook his head. "I mean, yes? What is it?"  
  
"How much notice do I need to give before I want to leave?"  
  
Surprise painted itself across Ron's face. /And that, at least, does not change./ He set down his fork and stared at his plate for a minute before asking, "Why? Are you wanting to leave already?" From the expression on his face, he hadn't even considered the possibility of Draco's leaving right away. Draco couldn't say he was astonished at the reaction - he was a bit surprised at himself for bringing the subject up. But still...  
  
"If the diaries are mine, I would like to leave as soon as possible," Draco said quietly, striving to make sure Flitwick wasn't going to overhear them - or that Harry, sitting on Flitwick's other side, wouldn't, for that matter. "There are things I need to take care of at home." /Like what? Terrorizing the house elves? Watching the grass grow? I thought we were past running, Draco./  
  
/I'm not bloody *running*/ he snarled. /I'm going home./  
  
"Just a day," Ron replied, brow creased slightly. He looked as if he were trying to decide whether or not to be genuinely angry with Draco for skipping out so soon. "Mostly it's just a matter of paperwork - your Apparating license has been revoked, but I was able to arrange a portkey in Hogsmeade. I'll just need a day to make sure it's set up properly. But after that... we can leave whenever you want to. There's no rush - it's not like there's a lot for an Auror to do nowadays, except go galloping off whenever Fudge thinks some bush wizard in the Orinoco is getting it into his head to play Dark Lord."  
  
"You really don't like being an Auror, do you?" Draco asked, surprised at himself for asking the question - and having the insight to read the signs in Ron's voice to generate it.  
  
Ron shook his head. "I don't mind the Auror part at all," he said, "but I hate dealing with Fudge and all the paper-pushers... Too many idiots in government for me. How they got there is anyone's guess."  
  
"Oh, I think I know," Draco said quietly. He poked at a bit of watermelon with his fork. "I'd imagine that it's how the... the Death Eaters worked as well - too many idiots, like you said."  
  
"Are you saying you were an idiot?" Weasley's hazel eyes were entirely too bright and his smile too devilish.  
  
"Yeah," Draco muttered, not looking at him. "I think I was."  
  
'Power attracts those who are weak on many levels,' Severus had written at some point during the beginning of the second year, when Death Eaters had begun to mass in earnest. 'I for myself, God help me, could not stay away from the promise of revenge on those who had more power and respect than I did during school. Appetite and weakness is a dangerous combination - a weak man will give into his desire for power, respect, fear, money... anything and everything he desires, he will obtain no matter what or who he has to forsake. And I thought I was the strongest of all of them!' Even on the page the words held a remnant of hysterical self-condemnation. 'How utterly blind I was, Draco, and I wished very strongly that you would see what I did not see until it was too late. But over the years I have come to the conclusion that we see what we want, and keep seeing it until something happens to make us see what *is*.'  
  
And Draco's happening had been this morning, daydreaming of Harry Potter with a limp and with a pain he'd never had in their schooldays, of the Harry Potter who sat near him *now.* And that was what *was*, not what Draco had secretly, desperately hoped for - and, in the end, it was so much better. He could not have this Harry, though, any more than he could have had the fiery and stubborn boy who had haunted his nights since seventh year, and it was so much easier to leave having just come to this realization, like severing a limb all at once instead of slowly incising through skin and flesh and bone.  
  
"You're really set on going, are you?" The way Ron said it, so softly and unobtrusively, almost made Draco change his mind - there was entirely too much in Ron's tone that suggested Draco was making a big mistake in leaving Harry and whatever Draco had with him, and the strange sort of friendship - or call it accord, maybe - Ron offered him.  
  
"I am," Draco said as firmly as he could manage. He swallowed a mouthful of scalding hot tea and almost spit it out but made himself swallow. The tears that came to his eyes could be blamed wholly on that, and for that he was grateful.  
  
"Tomorrow," Ron said quietly, sounding somewhat disappointed. "I'll come for you when I get word that everything's set up. Okay?"  
  
"Okay." Draco darted a sideways look at Harry, who did not seem to notice their conversation. "Thank you." /Thank you, Ron, for not asking questions./  
  
* * *  
  
Draco had gone to sleep that night unsure whether to be relieved or resigned; he settled on a mixture of both, as it was the only emotional cocktail that allowed him to fall asleep. It meant he kept his window shut without dithering about whether to close it or keep it open, and it meant that when he woke up the next morning it was with a sour sort of churning in his stomach and a faint sense of ill-ease, not the tormenting heat of yesterday. He slid out of bed and dressed, seeing by the clock that it was almost time to meet Ron for their trip to Hogsmeade, and his own trip home.  
  
The early morning was brisk, cold, and completely silent - it was Sunday, after all, and most of the castle's inhabitants were still asleep. Ron was leaning, half-asleep, outside Draco's door when Draco opened it; the clanking and scraping of the door, though, startled him into full wakefulness and he glared reproachfully at Draco, who shrugged.  
  
"Is everything ready?" Draco asked, gripping Severus' diary tightly and hoping that Ron didn't hear the strain in his voice.  
  
"Yeah." Ron's expression was unreadable. "You got your stuff?"  
  
Draco gestured to the small trunk floating behind him and nodded.  
  
"Let's get a move on, then," Ron said. He turned on his heel and gestured for Draco to follow him. Draco trailed along, slightly behind and surprised that the other Aurors were nowhere to be found. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask, or make some snide comment about faithful pets, when Ron said, "They're off on another assignment - Fudge is getting nervous again, I think. Something about bewitched guinea pigs in Sussex."  
  
"Oh. Bewitched guinea pigs, you say?" The huge doors leading out to the school gardens yawned open for them. Draco stepped under the proscenium archway, glancing up reflexively at the profusion of twisted, carved figures and the runes graven deeply into the stone that helped ward the school from evil. He wondered if they really worked anymore - it had let Voldemort, Bartemius Crouch Jr., and *him* through their defenses.  
  
Their walk to Hogsmeade took them along the same paths they had followed in former days, long and sloping with long views over distant moors, the inclination just enough to hurry footsteps down to the village and to make walking back tiresome and annoying. Draco remembered one of Goyle's more brilliant ideas - why not just stay in Hogsmeade for the rest of your life, then? He spun a brief picture of a small, snug flat overlooking the town square, maybe right over a baker's shop, or the herbalist's. Just... living there, season to season, with nothing to distinguish the days from one another except holidays and the occasional crowds of students.  
  
Malfoy Manor loomed, though, a step closer with each step they took. Ron explained that there was a portkey waiting for them just outside Honeydukes, and awkwardly segued into, "We were a little surprised that you were leaving so soon."  
  
The non sequitur and early morning had Draco reeling for a moment before he recovered enough to say, "Well, you said the diaries are mine and you don't really need to know what's in them, so I don't see why I should hang around any longer."  
  
"Dumbledore would have wanted you to stay," Ron said. "Minerva wants you to. And, y'know, it's been sort of nice having you around."  
  
"Is this the part where you confess your undying love for me?" Draco demanded, trying to keep his voice from rising. It became more difficult when he thought he heard Ron mumble something about not to *him*, but someone else. "Why do you *want* me around? An ex-Death Eater to gloat over? And nice? *Nice*? Weasley, I don't think I could have been nastier to you without being hexed to the other side of the world."  
  
"Well, you *did* say 'thanks' twice," Ron pointed out. He had that cheerfully neutral expression on his face that said he refused to get drawn into a shouting match. "And you said it yourself - ex-Death Eater. Do you honestly think we would have asked you here if we'd had reports of you sacrificing small children or unicorns to conjure Voldemort's spirit from the dead?"  
  
No, Draco couldn't honestly say that. Ever since Voldemort's death and the conclusion of his former compatriots' trials, he hadn't felt much of an urge to go back to the Dark Arts. He hadn't felt much of an urge to do anything. Even his two weeks away from the Manor, he'd not felt particularly stimulated outside of sparring with Ron, reading Severus' diaries, and talking/fighting/engaging in fantasy sex with Harry. "It doesn't mean I'm reformed, though," he muttered.  
  
Ron kicked at an offending piece of grass but kept walking. A chill breeze picked up and whipped back his red hair; an absent hand smoothed at it before returning to straighten out the robes he'd obviously thrown on hastily. "You know, you're not half as bad-ass as you like to think you are, Malfoy," he said. "Once you admit that, maybe things'll be easier for you."  
  
Draco had to admit that Ron had a point, but he decided he'd be damned if he let Ron know it. Still... he shuddered mentally at the implications of Ron's words. If he wasn't bad, evil, malicious, nefarious, hostile, conniving, pick the modifier... what was he? He wasn't *anything.* Ever since he could remember, that was how other people defined him, even his friends, who said that Draco was simply good at being bad. If he wasn't all those things, what was he?  
  
/Nothing,/ the small voice sighed from a recess in his gray matter. /Nothing./  
  
They were coming up on Hogsmeade now, and the little village was blanketed in the half-light of early morning. A few people moved in the small gardens outside their front doors, but most houses still had the still, silent look to them that said their inhabitants were asleep. Draco remembered one of the last times he had been to the village when it had been still and quiet as well, but that had been because Hogsmeade had been evacuated. He'd been one of the first Death Eaters to come through the village, and the boarded-up windows and unnatural desolation had disturbed him even then.  
  
"Okay..." Ron's voice broke into Draco's reverie. "It should be around here somewhere..." He had turned into a side alley just after passing the sign for Honeydukes, and had begun to poke around a small pile of junk. Draco half-wanted to ask if that was really sanitary, but kept quiet. A moment later, Ron produced a tiny, truly repellent and virulently pink rubber sandal and held it out for Draco's inspection. "Voila!"  
  
"Very nice."  
  
"It's set to go off in a couple minutes," Ron said, checking his watch, "so step on up."  
  
An uneasy thrill shot through Draco's stomach as he unlocked his trunk and placed the diary in it. He closed the lid and stepped up to put one hand on the flip-flop, keeping the other hand on his trunk. The couple of minutes dragged on interminably, during which Draco wondered an easy dozen times if the portkey had malfunctioned. Maybe... maybe that wasn't wholly a bad thing. He opened his mouth to say so, and to suggest that maybe they go back to the school, when he felt the familiar pull behind his navel and Hogsmeade vanished in a whirl of light and sound.  
  
The bleak environs of Malfoy Manor resolved back around them, and Draco stared up at the looming, hostile facade of the manor house with sudden misgiving. It seemed terribly alien all of a sudden, not at all the home he had grown up in. It was like someone else's home. /Maybe it is./  
  
"Well, this is where I leave you," Ron said with a sort of forced lightness. The expression in his hazel eyes was pained, although he managed a bright, winning smile. "Thank you for coming, Draco. I'm sorry if Severus' diaries didn't work out as you hoped."  
  
Apology from a Gryffindor in former days would have been too much to be borne, but Draco accepted it with a shrug and a nod. "It did, in a way."  
  
"Good." Ron glanced up at the columned walkway to the house and nervously turned the sandal over in his hands. "I need to be getting back. Owl me sometime. We'd love to hear from you."  
  
"You'd love to hear from me?"  
  
"What can I say? I'm a sucker for punishment." Ron grinned and inclined his head in a strange sort of half-bow before taking the Portkey in both hands. "See ya."  
  
With a sudden pop Ron vanished and Draco was alone. Very alone, and feeling very small under the towering expanse of his own house. From a great distance he heard one of the house-elves ask if he should take Draco's trunk and if the Master was alright - he left so quickly, Blinker didn't know what to do with himself, sir, but the house was in perfect order, it was, and there was some mail that had come while he was gone.  
  
"It is the Chartreuses, sir, they is wanting to know about the Gringotts account sir has inherited... and the Goyleses too, they has been leaving letters for Blinker since you left Master-sir..."  
  
Numb, Draco followed Blinker inside, brushing off the house-elf's chatter with grunts and monosyllables. He stood for a long moment in the empty echoing foyer, staring up at the huge ancestral portraits that glowered down on him in silent disapproval. Just after his initial incarceration, he had re-charmed them to remove their voices, so the portrait of Malacoda Malfoy ranted on soundlessly, although the old dame had apparently worked herself into quite a state. Her husband, Marius Malfoy, kept his mouth shut, but he was frowning bitterly. /What *will* the family ghosts say?/ That seemed to be the major thrust of Malacoda's argument as she gestured violently at him.  
  
It was almost impossible to think that there was still a whole day to get through - and a day after that, and a day after that. /Forever and forever and forever.../   
  
Draco wavered, indecisive for a moment, before he recalled that Blinker had said there was mail for him. No... no mail. He didn't want to read whatever it was the Goyles would be sending him. Usually it was pleas for money or a good attorney. Unfortunately for them, his assets were frozen and handled through a complex chain of command in the Ministry Department of Fiscal Services. Unfortunately for him, assuming that he actually cared about the money - but he had quickly learned to ignore what amounted to his newfound poverty.  
  
Might as well go to his room, then... The huge grandfather clock said it was only seven-thirty. He could sleep for a few hours, then - he was still a night owl and preferred waking up when the morning was edging toward noon. Maybe he'd sleep more, as talking to Ron usually proved emotionally draining and right now Draco felt *very* drained indeed.   
  
Glad that he had fixed upon a decision, Draco let his body automatically take him up the winding marble staircase and through the side door that led to the family apartments. All the portraits along the way bellowed soundlessly at him; the only sound in the place was the heavy plodding of his footsteps on the succession of checkered marble tile and mahogany and fine rugs.  
  
His bedroom was, of course, unchanged, exactly as it had been since fifth year when his mother had gone into a fit of redecorating. It was mostly blue tones (black and gray were just too... too cliché, Narcissa Malfoy had said), not necessarily somber, but not cheering either. Draco had never really noticed. It was just a room, but in the way that rooms had, it had grown on him to the point that, even after his parents' deaths should have moved him to the master suites, he stayed here. The bed was indented in the proper places and everything, the small statuettes and paintings, the gilding and brocade, were exactly where they were supposed to be. He wondered if his old, tattered stuffed pegasus was still hidden in the back of his sock drawer, but didn't bother to find out.  
  
Sighing a bit, he pulled off his robes, felt unexpected catches where the fine material had begun to unravel. Well, Blinker and the other two house-elves were dying of boredom with only him to wait on - they'd fall over themselves repairing his clothes. Draco wadded up the robes and flung them in the general direction of his clothes hamper.  
  
Only the robes never got there. They connected with something invisible and slid to the floor.  
  
Draco was vaguely aware of a strangled yell jolting out of his throat, but all his concentration was fixed on the overwhelming, horrifying thought that he didn't have his wand - his hand had automatically gone to where he kept it, in an inside pocket of his jacket, but as inevitably happened, he remembered that his wand had been snapped in front of a silent, staring gathering of Ministry officials. He stumbled back until he hit the dresser, felt the brass handles digging into his back, and wanted to keep going.  
  
/It's Voldemort, it's the Aurors... Oh, God.../ his mind rambled on in incoherent disbelief. His wand was snapped, gone. He was going to die. /Finally./  
  
/No... no, I don't want to die. Not yet./  
  
The air shimmered and rustled before him, and in one fluid motion, the invisibility cloak covering the intruder was flung off and the Harry Potter himself stared dead at Draco, who was cornered and trapped and disbelieving. 


	5. Chapter Five

[Note: This is a revised and generally cleaned-up version of the original fic. My apologies for the complete lack of new material, but there were a few inconsistencies in the fic I felt needed to be addressed.]  
  
+Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus+  
(Vergil)  
  
CHAPTER FIVE  
  
Once he regained the power of speech, the first words out of Draco's mouth were, "Does Ron know you're here?"  
  
Harry was distinctly pale in the dim light of Draco's room and pain had tightened his expression - still, though, a slight smile danced at the corners of his mouth. "He does," he said. "Why do you think it was just the two of you going to Hogsmeade? Well, three, counting me, but the rest of the Aurors would never have let me tag along and it would have been too difficult to stay hidden from them. It was hard enough keeping up with you as it was."  
  
Draco's eyes involuntarily darted to Harry's injured leg. Harry caught the reflexive flickering and smiled, if the grim upward twitch of his lips could be called so. Wildly, Draco wondered if he should offer the man a seat, but in a moment of cold calculation decided /No... let him suffer./ If Harry was going to ask to sit down, though, he gave no sign of it. Instead, the sardonic smile remained fixed as he shifted himself so most of his weight was borne by his good leg, the injured one relaxed and dangling like that of a lame horse.  
  
"What in God's name would be so important to you that you'd come gallivanting all the way out here?" Draco felt uneasiness creeping up in him; it had been six months since his last visitor, a Ministry lackey, had come to him, and that had been a brief, businesslike meeting in Draco's office. But this... this... This was Harry Potter, the real and painful fact of him, in his bedroom, staring at him with eyes too determined for pain. It was a scene cut right from his fantasies, Harry was, and now that he stood here, Draco had no idea what to do and hid behind his typical caustic demand.  
  
"I told you I wanted to know why you saved my life," Harry said. "I think this is the third time I've said it, and the only answer I've gotten is that you saved me because of my 'annoying presence' or something like that. Once you give me a straight answer, I'll go."  
  
/Or stay, if you'd like,/ Draco privately amended, allowing himself that momentary hope.  
  
He couldn't keep looking at those green eyes. Draco straightened and turned away to pace the length of his bedroom, trying to keep a lid on his agitation. 'There's always a time when you find everything you thought was true about yourself is, at best, half-truth,' Severus said from the deep recesses of his memory. Draco could hear his mentor saying those words and see them on the pages of his diary. 'No matter how cold or how self-possessed you think you are, something will happen - depend upon it - that will drive you very nearly mad. It will come, Draco, if it hasn't yet.'  
  
/So this is it./ Draco fought for calm, trying to ignore Severus' prophecy. /This is where I snap./  
  
"There *are* no straight answers," he said.  
  
"Really?"  
  
"You of all people should know that." Draco took a steadying breath and forced himself to stand still. "And you also know that the real answer isn't the one you want to hear."  
  
"They're also the ones that need to be heard," Harry said. Draco was briefly gratified to hear a slight quaver in his opponent's voice. "You of all people should know *that*."  
  
Draco's eyes narrowed. "And what's that supposed to mean?"  
  
"Oh, come on," Harry said impatiently. "Don't tell me *you've* never wondered why you got off with no formal indictment and house arrest, just because I asked for it."  
  
"They excused me from trial," Draco said tightly, "on your word. They didn't acquit me - oh, no, they'd never do that. They'd be right to - I'm as guilty as any Death Eater they locked up in Azkaban. No, they shipped me back home on The Boy Who Lived's say-so, and let me tell you right now I'd much rather be in Azkaban. It can't possibly be worse than this."  
  
"You should tell that to the people who ended up there," Harry said. "I'm sure that'll make them feel so much better."  
  
Draco laughed, a bit unhinged at the crude, wild sound jolting out of his own throat. "Maybe I should - then they'll realize how easy they have it. Oh, you're not going to understand - I can see it. You spared my life, Potter, and that's what we're down to, isn't it? Both of us want to know why we're alive." Fury simmered along his veins and his thoughts wove erratically back and forth, evading his desperate grasps at coherence. "I don't believe in the crap Dumbledore shoveled into us about 'life debts' and all that. Why'd you save *me*?"  
  
"Whether you believe it or not, it's true," Harry said. "Some things don't require belief to be real."  
  
The utter simplicity and directness of the statement cut through Draco's confusion. /There are some things that exist because we believe them to exist - things like beauty, joy, love and hate - and there are those things that *are*./ The old cant about life debt had always seemed nauseatingly idealistic to Draco, who found the idea of forced reciprocity unnecessary; if someone wanted to be brave and altruistic, they might as well do it on their own time. But he remembered Severus' words on the subject, words spoken by a man who had found himself indebted to his longtime enemy: 'I hated it, every moment of my life, I hated being in James Potter's debt, but I felt it - even after he died and I was rid of him, I felt responsibility pressing on me. No, it wasn't responsibility, it was something stronger, something I couldn't ignore, and I hated it - and James - even more.'  
  
Draco wondered if Severus had slipped and said James rather than the derisive 'Potter,' as he never called any of his enemies by their first names if he could possibly help it. And he also knew that Severus would never had done all he did if it wasn't for his debt to a man he hated as much in memory as in life. So it was true, then - there had been something owed between the two of them, but Harry at least had the plausible excuse of obligation. It stung a little, thinking that Harry had been acting solely out of wizardly duty and not another motive.  
  
Now, though, Harry waited quietly, still in that crooked and awkward position that was vaguely painful for Draco to witness. Masking his internal struggle as best he could, Draco waved a hand in the general direction of his desk and muttered a command for Harry to take a seat. Mercifully, Harry did, sighing a bit as tendons again made that horrible pulling sound.  
  
"I felt it," Harry was saying earnestly now, as if picking up on Draco's thoughts. His expression was curiously open and undefeated, so typically Harry that it hurt Draco to look at him. "It's not like... It wasn't like anything I'd ever felt before. Each day leading up to your trial got worse and worse, until it got to the point that I knew if I didn't do something I'd go insane. If you'd died, I don't know what I would have done."  
  
"Pine away with anguish?"  
  
"It felt that way, yes."  
  
That was almost too much to be borne, that honest answer to his sarcastic question. Draco stepped closer, trying to loom a little, but the determination in Harry's eyes said he was not intimidated. "If I hadn't saved you," Draco said quietly, pitching his voice so that Harry had to lean forward a little to catch his words - lean in enough so Draco could smell the sweat and scent of him - "If I hadn't saved you, but you'd still gotten away from our little meeting alive, would you have spoken up for me against the Ministry?"  
  
"No," Harry said. "I wouldn't have."  
  
"A good answer."  
  
"But I'm answering that on the assumption that, at that point, I would have absolutely no idea of the person you might eventually become," Harry continued, overriding Draco's satisfaction. "I would have made that decision without having found Snape's diaries or having the opportunity to contact you and see you for myself."  
  
"Explain." Draco did not move. Harry remained unaffected.  
  
"If you were half as bad as you think you are," Harry said, voice lowering in imitation of Draco's, "you would never have come when Ron asked. You wouldn't treasure Snape's diaries like you do - he would have been just another casualty Dumbledore's side would have to take, am I right?" He paused, and evidently saw Draco's reluctant agreement in his eyes, then continued, "and you wouldn't have told me what you did about living here - you wouldn't be miserable because here would be the perfect opportunity to think about revenge. You wouldn't even miss your parents.  
  
"So, back then, if I knew what I know now, yes, I would have saved you."  
  
Draco felt his eyes slipping shut as if by not seeing Harry he could somehow not hear the words he spoke. /If I knew what I know now, yes, I would have saved you./ Something within him, small and tight and greedy, wanted to hear those words again, because those words brought so much pain with them, and pleasure too, and Draco Malfoy rarely ever experienced one without the other. Pain because what Harry said was, at some fundamental level, very true - Ron had said it too: He was not Evil. He missed his parents like any normal person who'd loved his parents would miss them. He hated his endless confinement to misery but knew he deserved it.  
  
'The one thing of which evil is incapable of being is fully self-aware,' Severus had written near the very end of the third year, one of the most recent things Draco had read. 'It can't experience the sensation of guilt in its fullest capacity - oh, a true Death Eater knows he's guilty of his crimes, an evil one will rejoice in being guilty, but isn't pain concomitant with guilt? Pain, misery, the pangs of conscience - I felt them more than I care to admit here. Evil can't experience that - it cares nothing for that which does not feed its appetite for the degradation of *others.*'  
  
Harry was watching him closely, with those green eyes that missed nothing. Draco felt the terrific pressure of that gaze, wanted to crumble under it, forced himself to meet his opponent's face. /The only way I can think of this is how I've always thought of our little go-rounds - a battle./ But he had come to the point where concession was becoming so dangerously close. He had agreed, albeit privately, with Harry, reluctantly because Draco Malfoy never gave in without a fight and clung even to his badness with tenacity.  
  
And once he agreed with Harry... what would happen then? His mind, such as it was, could not even conceive of it.  
  
"You know what I'm saying is true," Harry pressed, his voice still soft, the words faintly cajoling. "You know it, Draco."  
  
He... he... He couldn't know this. Desperately, backed into a corner, he shook his head in mute denial.  
  
"You know it," Harry repeated, leaning a bit more closely now. "I can tell."  
  
"What do you know?" Oh, God, he couldn't speak. He couldn't even see - but yet he could see those two piercing, demanding green eyes, see the way Harry's body leaned into his, evoking a response from his own, however unwilling, all of him a promise.  
  
/This is what you can be,/ Harry said. /This is what you can have. You *know* it, Draco./  
  
"What do you want me to say?" It was supposed to be a demand, but by the time it had squeezed past the constriction in Draco's throat it had become a plea. "What is it, Harry?" A terrific knot released inside him and more questions/statements came pouring out like water through floodgates. "Do you want me to admit you're right and just... just freaking change into this bloody angel figure? Do you want me to admit that I miss my parents and all my friends who either got killed or locked up? Do you want me to say that I saved you because I couldn't even begin to think of what it would be like if you were dead?  
  
"And isn't *that* just bloody brilliant?" He paused and drew a breath, regaining some of his composure, feeling it flow into him like cold water, or like ice. "What would you say to that, Potter?"  
  
"I'd say..." Harry blinked and his voice shook, but he went on. "I'd say I'd want to know more."  
  
"Oh?" Draco turned, unable to stand that endless gaze. He felt it so keenly, though, pressing against his back silent and demanding. He felt, too, everything begin to crumble, all the certainties that had mortared his life together had loosened. The whole edifice was cracking, falling apart like a ruin, he was breaking up, shedding, sloughing layers of himself away. "Could you really stand to hear a confessed Death Eater say that he couldn't live without knowing you were alive? That he couldn't bring himself to kill you because... because..." /Stop asking questions! You know the answers, Draco. Admit that you do and be done with it./  
  
"I couldn't kill you," he whispered brokenly. "I never could."  
  
Harry sat there silent, still leaning forward with a terrible sort of tension in his upper body. Draco turned to see that, to see the painful honesty shining in those green eyes, honesty and gratification - no malicious triumph on hearing such a confession, no horror at hearing it, either, both of which were reactions Draco knew he could deal with. But this... this pure, simple pleasure accepted, not without complications, but accepted as one would accept a gift given freely... How to deal with that?   
  
Again, that little, greedy something fastened on that look and devoured it, and there was pain - pain because Draco knew he didn't deserve it, pleasure because it was Harry, because the rightness of his own words, the need for them to be spoken, had relieved him somewhat.  
  
"Thank you," Harry said, the words unexpectedly subdued in the heavy silence.  
  
"Why?" Draco asked. "Why wouldn't you let this go?"  
  
"Because of what I saw that night," Harry said. He straightened a bit but still did not break his gaze. There was no demand in his eyes now, no, nothing but that shining, brutal honesty. "I saw... God, I sound like Trelawney... I saw something in you. I couldn't let myself believe it at the time - it was just too crazy, even though things were crazy enough as it was - but I *saw* it." He shook his head ruefully. "Ron used to harass me about it all the time, but the more he ragged on me, the more I thought about it, and by the time the war ended and you were facing your indictment, I knew I couldn't let the Ministry have you. It wasn't just the life-debt thing... it was something else. It was believing, I guess, that you were something... something else."  
  
"Something else?" Draco echoed, slightly amused. "Could you clarify that a bit?"  
  
"I'm not sure if I could," Harry said. "Ron could do it better... He said once, seventh year I think it was, that the more he couldn't stand Hermione, the more he wanted to understand her."  
  
"Ronald Weasley said that?" Draco asked. "Are we talking about the same Ron Weasley here?"  
  
Harry laughed. "That was my reaction exactly when he said that - I wanted to know where he had the real Ron Weasley locked up, but he just gave me this look - you know *the* look - and said I could laugh all I wanted, but it was true. So I watched them for awhile, and I decided that he did have a point; it was like, whenever he drove Hermione up the wall with his slacking off or rule-breaking or whatever, her reactions told him something different every time. Or something like that. It only makes sense to Ron."  
  
"That's the way it is with many things, I understand."  
  
"Very true." Harry grinned and shook his head, and for an abrupt moment, the classmate and avowed enemy was back, so truly and powerfully Draco was staggered - the unreserved smile, the flashing, passionate expression that said nothing of what Harry experienced was halfway or somehow impure. No - joy, guilt, hatred, love... it was all undiluted, more or less. "But it... it does make sense in a way. You learn just as much from the people who annoy you as much as the people you can tolerate. Maybe more, if you're smart about it. Ron just figured it out before I did. After he told me that, I started thinking about all our fights - I think I remember most of them - and about that night... and I sort of, well, realized things."  
  
"What'd you realize?" Draco couldn't stand it, being sprawled, pinned and twisting in Harry's gaze. He never could.  
  
"I didn't hate you," Harry said at last, mercifully looking away. "I've said it before. You weren't the obnoxious kid I knew at Hogwarts, and you weren't the evil, conscienceless being Fudge kept telling me you were. But I didn't know what you were, or what to think of you until I could see you again and... and talk to you about stuff, so I could figure out how I felt."  
  
"I always hated you." Draco winced at his words, but felt compelled to say them in the honesty of the moment. "Really, I couldn't stand you - ever since I was old enough to know your name and what it meant, I hated your guts. All through school I hated you, but things started changing. The war, I guess, and seeing that things weren't as simple as black and white." He thought about that, how Severus' words had just now come back to haunt him, so bitterly prophetic, so wrenchingly, terribly true. /'... we see what we want, and keep seeing it until something happens to make us see what *is*.'/  
  
"And now what do you think?"  
  
Draco shook his head. "I can't think," he answered, "but I know I don't hate you. I don't... I can't even resent you." That was true as well, although resentment came very naturally to him.   
  
Unexpectedly, Harry's entire body loosened, as if tension were flooding out of it. His head tipped back, tendons in his neck stretching to stand out sharply through pale skin, and a sigh shook his slender frame. For a long moment he sat like that, unmoving, before he blinked, leaned forward again, and once more fixed his gaze on Draco - but where it had been piercing and painful to meet, it was now clear and simple, friendly, undemanding.  
  
"If you knew how long I've waited - no, hoped, really - to hear you say something like that..." Harry shook his head. "When we'd found the diaries and decided to ask you to come, I think Ron had to keep me from throwing myself out a window... I didn't know what I'd do if I saw you. When I saw you. I only had my guesses to go on, and Hermione would be the first to tell you they're rarely helpful. I sort of... well, don't kill me... but I followed along a couple times when Ron took you back and forth between your room and the Great Hall, and I listened enough to figure out that I wasn't wrong. Or at least, I wasn't too far wrong."  
  
Draco was dimly aware he should be furious over Harry's issue with respecting the privacy of others, but anger seemed terrifically petty at the moment. Instead he was caught in the realization, the pleasure that Harry had *hoped* for him, had believed against all evidence and prior inclination, that he, Draco Malfoy, was not wholly evil and could be something different, something far different from what even he himself thought he could be.  
  
'Evil doesn't hope for redemption,' Severus had also said. 'It hopes for nothing. When you read these words, Draco, I hope you'll realize how true they are. It took me many years to come to this realization, though, and by that time, I had suffered much. I hated James for dying and foisting his son on me, for making me transform into a decent human being - or one who played at decency. He made me realize that I wasn't evil, because evil would kill his child because it *was* his. It wouldn't do like I did and watch out for him. So I couldn't be evil... what could I be? I believe I have never satisfactorily answered that question, but I do know that I am not so incontrovertibly evil as I'd once thought; believing we are something absolute, whether absolute good or absolute evil, strikes me as being true arrogance, as if saying that we're gods and cannot be changed.'  
  
He waited quietly for a moment, wondering why there wasn't a sudden flash of revelation coming over him. At such moments, when lives were supposed to change, he thought there was supposed to be something dramatic - fireworks, weeping and wailing, laughter, orgasm. Whatever. But silently as Draco waited and waited for it to come, he realized that there wasn't going to be a tidal wave that would take him up, sweep him away and spit back a newly cleaned and baptized Draco Malfoy.  
  
Instead, it came quietly, very quietly, and it softly stole over him like the realization of growing warmth.  
  
/Nothing,/ the small voice whispered. /It was all nothing, what you thought of yourself - nothing more, really, than air. Less than that. And what you are *now*... let Harry tell you. He knows./  
  
"I... Thank you, Harry," Draco said, unable to say much more.  
  
Harry blinked. "Don't mention it," he said, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He stood slowly, wincing a bit, and Draco was almost startled to see that his leg was still injured - so much had changed in the course of a minute, surely that must have changed as well (or maybe he had simply forgotten for a moment.) He stayed where he was, watching but trying not to appear concerned as Harry straightened and gingerly shook his leg out.  
  
They stood, the two men, for a long moment. Awkwardness poked at Draco, who wondered wildly what to say - offer refreshments? Ask Harry if he needed anything? Hug him? Kiss him? Part of him wished desperately to do the last two of those options - and a bit more - but it had been so long since he had done either of those things and he wasn't sure he could do them yet as they should be done: properly, without a trace of expectation or revulsion. He remembered his mother hugging him and pushing his hair out of his eyes, the only person to ever do that. But he had been very young then, and as he'd gotten older, her displays of affection had mysteriously vanished.  
  
Once again, Harry was watching him, and he fidgeted for a moment before saying, "I don't know what to do."  
  
"Neither do I," Harry said. His gaze slowly drifted out to the window and the sky beyond it, which had edged toward late morning. Late morning only? Surely, Draco thought, they'd been in his bedroom for ages. "I came here," Harry continued, "not expecting anything - just hoping, really. I should be going."  
  
"You're welcome to stay," Draco said quickly, pained at hearing Harry's words.  
  
The morning light glinted in Harry's eyes, making them prismatic. Everything flashed in them, a dizzying swirl of light and emotion. "Thank you." The words were simple but richly felt, and Draco found his own pain easing. "I really do need to get going, though - I need to finish preparing a test to torture the fifth-year Ravenclaws."  
  
"Come back, then," Draco said. He took one step forward, then two, three, four, enough to bring him to stand before Harry, who did not move. "Any time. You're always... that is to say, you're welcome here."  
  
"I will." Harry's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. He half-closed his eyes, shook his head and mouthed something, as if debating with some private voice, then finally sighed and held out his hand. Draco took it automatically, savoring the warm, slightly moist skin against his own. /This is how it's supposed to be,/ he thought with deep satisfaction. /This is how I want it, and this is how it *will* be./  
  
Their hands dropped after a time, only when it became a bit too strange to be touching for so long. Harry blinked as if coming to, opened his mouth to say something before Draco broke in with "The Ministry has the manor blocked against Apparition, and I don't think Ron left the Portkey, so I don't know... Maybe one of the house-elves could fix up the horseless carriage thing and take you out a few miles so you can Apparate back to Hogwarts or something."  
  
"Oh, there's no need," Harry assured him. "I need to stretch a bit - if you just open up that window there, that'd be great, thanks."  
  
/Idiot. He's an Animagus./ Draco wondered if his new self was going to be so forgetful, and he smiled ruefully at the prospect of being a New and Improved Draco Malfoy. /No... not new,/ he decided after a moment, /and maybe not even improved. Just different./ He brushed past Harry, moving a bit closer than propriety suggested, and tripped the latch to push the window wide open. The fresh coolness of a late morning breeze wafted through to them, rich with the smells of grass and leaves and sun.  
  
Harry seemed to expand in the pool of sunlight, even as he bent to gather the Invisibility Cloak into a neat package fastened by the ties that would hold it together at the throat. He straightened and sunlight flashed in his black hair, making it shine like obsidian except where white touched it, and then it was like snow, or silver. He half-turned and smiled at Draco, said, "I'll owl you soon" and then his form twisted, condensed, flowed into the streamlined shape of a dark hawk that, with one powerful sweep of its wings, soared out the bedroom window and was gone.  
  
Gone. Draco stood there for a day, a day in which the sun did not move. /Gone,/ he thought to himself, tasting the word as if for the first time, realizing that 'gone' did not mean, as it always had, 'forever.'  
[continued in 'The Metamorphosis of Narcissus'] 


End file.
